#also i need to stop being afraid to write sequel/world continuations

[pyrriax]

one day i will stop being afraid of getting hounded for writing something that is less pretty and more just. raw.

[alrightbuckaroo]

Thanks to @jesuisici33, @lemonlyman-dotcom, @orchidscript for the tags and double thanks to @welcometololaland for the tag and thinking up this lovely little game <3

Rules: List your WIPs below (if you only write one fic at a time, feel free to include future WIPs/ideas!) then answer the following questions. Then, tag as many people as you have WIPs (or more)

1. WIP List:

Alright, so to save you from endless scrolling, I'm just going to list those that have a semblance of a plot and some words written (because surprisingly, yes there are more):

you can't catch a sinner with a saint (old west au)

yesterday's love was a warm summer breeze (sequel to the parisian summer romance au)

lone star lately (workplace mid 2000s rom-com au)

beauty lingers out of reach (artist!carlos nude model!tk au)

everybody is somebody's fool (1940s au)

the rolling thunder of your finger tips (reporter!tk weatherman!carlos dom/sub au)

the sunshine is in your smile (alternate first meeting)

these eyes don't cry (5 + 1)

love in a hurricane (bodyguard au)

love by any other name (witness protection au [but make it funny] )

shoot a man and watch him die (on the lam au)

29 going on 30 (tk turns thirty event fic)

come and take a walk on the wild side (partly published, partly driving me bonkers)

We'll be here forever if I tell you the summary of each one, but if you want to know more, don't be afraid to ask!

2. Which of your WIPs is currently the longest?:

come and take a walk on the wild side is currently 60k and does not show ANY sign of stopping right now.

3. Which WIP do you expect will end up the longest?

I'm thinking either the Old West AU or the 1940s AU simply because I plan to do such vast world building.

4. Which WIP is your favourite to write/the most enjoyable to write? Why?

Old West AU for sure, but that's also where most of my mind has been on my upcoming WIPs. I'm going to love revisiting the "We'll Always Have Paris" verse though.

5. Which WIP do you find the most intimidating to write? Why?

Either the 1940s AU because it's a case fic and I'll have to put a lot of thought into that b-plot or the On the Lam AU because it's not going to be the most sanitized storytelling.

Neither Carlos nor Tk is the villain, but the world won't see it that way.

6. Which WIP do you experience the most self-doubt about. Why?

I think it's yesterday's love was a warm summer breeze, the sequel to summer slipped us underneath her tongue.

I didn't expect so many people to be excited for the sequel, let alone love the story so much, so I'm just hoping I continue doing justice to that little world.

7. Which of your WIPs will you seek out a beta/sensitivity reader for? Why?

I'm not sure, I think I might need a sensitivity reader for these eyes don't cry simply because I've never written a therapist before.

8. Have any of your WIPs been struck by the curse of writer's block?

come and take a walk on the wild side was on the mend for a second there, but right now the inspiration is back. TK's interlude is being written, ya'll!

9. Which WIP has your favourite OC? Tell us about them?

If you've read any of my AUs you know I LOVE a good OC so this is like asking me to pick a favorite child.

Ruth Baker is an office clerk in the Old West AU who I simply just adore. I get to write things like this:

Roy chuckles and it’s both sinister and mocking. “Oh Reyes, what I actually want to say wouldn’t be polite to do so in such,” Roy’s eyes glance over at Ruth, they land on her chest for a little too long. “Feminine company.” “Eat shit, Roy.” Ruth’s cigarette doesn’t move as she says it, not once looking up from her typewriter. 

10. Which WIP is the sexiest?

come and take a walk is sexy but it's not the couple you necessarily want to root for so that might be subjective. Though, I do get write fun moments like this:

“God,” Hartlock emphasizes the word, putting a mix of exasperation and desperate, wanton longing. TK’s aware of where this is going and decides to lean into it. He lowers himself on his lap, straddling him. Hartlock welcomes him, as if his lap is a spot made for TK. “You are such a handful.” He places his hands on TK’s hips, reaches under his shirt and touches his bare skin. his fingertips feeling like a sunburn. TK leans in and whispers, “I know, but that’s what you’ve got two hands for.” He presses his lips against Sam’s neck, kissing it with intent. Hartlock gives in to the moment, his hands looking to grab purchase on TK’s skin.

If we're talking strictly Tarlos sexy; toss up between the Old West AU and the Bodyguard AU (for now 🤭)

11. Which WIP is the angstiest?

Definitely these eyes don't cry. That said, it's almost been one of the most fun to write; so what does that really say about me 🥴

12. Which WIP has the best characterisation (in your humble opinion)?

I write so many AUs so it's hard to say who's extremely true to the show, but maybe these eyes don't cry since it's exploring what the show has given us as Carlos?

13. Which WIP has the best scene setting (in your humble opinion)?

Old West AU most likely. That's one I'm really take my time with the world building on. By the end of you're going to be so sick of hearing about dim bar lightning, crooked streams and blood crusted eyebrows.

14. Which WIP have you worked the hardest on?

Right now, it's probably yesterday's summer love was a warm summer breeze since I made both TK and Carlos' journey in the Parisian Summer AU so detailed. Now I have to keep it going LMAO

Here's what the research folder looks like right now (and I haven't even fully started writing it yet):

15. Which WIP do you have the highest expectations for? Why?

Old West AU because I'm finally writing things I've always wanted to give myself the chance to write. Cowboys, religious imagery, a fully fleshed arc and hey, the smut is kind of just icing on the cake at this point.

16. Do you dream about any of your WIPs?

I actually just had one (as in TODAY) and I dreamed I wrote half a chapter of two of them and just POSTED THEM??

17. Do any of your WIPs have particular complexities that your other fics don't?

I'm hesitant to say other stories won't have these things going forward, come and take a walk on the wild side really does utilize the non-linear storytelling tag and the unreliable narrator tag.

You're not supposed to agree with TK often, but that's the point.

That said, I love an unreliable narrator so I can't say it won't show up again. It just doesn't show up in the other works I'm working on, right now.

18. Which WIP is the funniest or has the most humour?

Either Lone Star Lately or Beauty Lingers Out of Reach. Lone Star Lately is literally a workplace rom-com au that teeters the line of enemies to lovers it's gotta be FILLED with humor.

19. Do any of your WIPs contain outside POVs or a deep dive on a character other than the main ship? How are you finding that process?

Owen's arc is actually the B Plot of the Witness Protection AU! I love a good b-plot (and sometimes even a c-plot) and this one is no different.

Due to being in the Witness Protection program and not being able to be out in the public eye as often as he used to, he can't be a firefighter for the time being. So, now he has to figure out who he is when he's not his job.

20. Tell us one thing we don't know about one or more of your WIPs.

Four of these AUs already have sequels outlined - some are multi-chapter, some are just really long one-shots

I'm actually working on one that's a giant secret and I can't wait to share it with all of you (it's been a blast to write so far)

no pressure tagging: @heartstringsduet, @carlos-in-glasses, @strandnreyes, @reyesstrand, @bonheur-cafe, @freneticfloetry, @rosedavid, @ambiguouspenny, @wandering-night19, @thisbuildinghasfeelings, @lightningboltreader, @paperstorm, @three-drink-amy, @chaotictarlos, @carlos-tk, @sanjuwrites, @birdclowns, @basilsunrise, @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut, @catanisspicy, @rmd-writes, @kiloskywalker, @whatsintheboxmh, @guardian-angle22 and of course anyone who wants to join in :)

if you're an artist, gifmaker or cross-stitcher, these questions might be better suited for you :)

[sineala]

Five fic self rec meme!

Tagged by @nostalgicatsea approximately two weeks ago. I am not entirely sure what the parameters of this meme are but I think it might just be reccing five fics of mine that I like. I currently have 302 stories on AO3, so sifting through the contenders here was challenging. I tried to stick to shorter work of mine. This is all Marvel fic because that's what I've written the most of, because I feel like I've become a better writer over the years, and because I decided that the PWP I wrote in The Eagle fandom in Latin might have, uh, limited appeal.

All-Time Low (Marvel 616, Steve/Tony, 12,000 words, Explicit.)

You know how sometimes you write a story that ends up being exactly the story you wanted to tell? You get it down on the page and somehow it's exactly the way you wanted it to be in your head? The words just come out of you easy and fast and you're in the zone the entire time? (Yes, I know the term is actually "flow state.") And, sure, maybe it still needs some editing, but writing it is just this extremely good experience where you don't ever stop and wonder how any of it should go and all the words are just there. You know the thing I mean? I only have a couple stories that happened like this, but this one is one of them. I don't have much memory of actually writing this one, which is how that goes; I remember that I got the prompt and I knew what I wanted to write and then somehow this entire thing happened.

It was actually written for one of Kiyaar's prompts, which was that Tony should be sleeping with men for money during the second drinking arc and Steve should find out and there should be "shame and humiliation and tears." I looked at it and I thought, oh, I got this. The element of Steve then sleeping with Tony after he finds this out, which is a big part of the story, was actually not part of the original prompt, which I don't think even occurred to me until after Ki read the story and said she liked that development that I'd come up with that part myself. My brain was just like, hey, I know exactly how this story goes. Never even crossed my mind to do anything else. 

I keep putting off writing the fix-it sequels -- I have Plans for how the blizzard goes in this universe -- because I am afraid I won't be able to make them as good as the original story.

The Libertine (Marvel Ultimates, Steve/Tony, 6,000 words, Explicit.)

One day, I was just sitting there minding my own business and I thought, "You know what? Ults began in the early 2000s and therefore early-canon Ults Tony would absolutely have self-identified as a metrosexual," and then I thought, "Goddammit, I guess I have to write this story now."

I know that this one is in most ways a pretty standard first-time getting-together story but I thought it would be delightful to make Steve and Tony's roles in it opposite from what the prototypical Ults Steve/Tony story would do. So Tony here is like "actually, no, I'm not gay, I'm just metrosexual... oh shit, wait, I think I'm actually pretty gay after all" and Steve is the guy who spent World War II sleeping with every guy he could find. In the story, neither of them expect this about the other one, and I think fandom doesn't either.

I am also weirdly proud of thinking up the title of this story because "libertine" is a word you would probably want to apply to Ults Tony and yet Steve, the Sentinel of Liberty, ends up claiming basically every other liberty-related word, for obvious reasons. And maybe here he gets this one too.

(Incidentally, reading through the See Also section of the Wikipedia entry on "libertine" is a trip I think you should all take. Wow.)

The Longing and Yearning (Bullet Points. Steve/Tony, 13,000 words, Explicit.)

This is also a pretty standard first-time story but it's also my attempt to make Bullet Points fandom happen, which I think pretty much worked, so I'm pretty happy about that. It's a very small continuity, but it's a Steve/Tony thing now!

Steve and Tony never actually meet in canon and also Steve dies halfway through the series, but I had a lot of fun imagining what they might be like together. It was interesting to get to write Tony hero-worshipping a much older Steve, who was Iron Man and had basically all the physical trauma Tony usually gets from being Iron Man, and Tony wanting to be Iron Man because of Steve being Iron Man. Which is, you know, not usually how Steve/Tony goes. I also had a lot of fun furnishing Steve's 1950s-1960s house for him (Gwyn helped me out a lot with this while betaing) and writing Steve and Tony into a world of slightly vintage US government employee homophobia in the age of the Red Scare, which I don't usually get to do in Avengers fic although it occurs to me now that I actually really could have been doing this all along in 616 early canon.

Look After Your Heart (Marvel 616, Steve/Tony, 19,000 words, Mature.)

Last week, I remembered I'd written this when someone was asking for recs of stories where Tony's loneliness plays a major role and I ended up describing this one as "loneliness is Tony's villain origin story." I hadn't thought about it in years and I reread it and was like, you know, this wasn't half-bad.

This has not been one of my most popular Steve/Tony works, I think because the tags and summary make it look like a real downer -- which, okay, yeah, it kind of is -- but I would like to point out that it actually has a happy ending. I wish to stress this. Happy Steve/Tony ending. I promise. You just take a trip through hell to get there.

So this is an AU where time bullets don't exist and when Steve gets shot at the end of Civil War, he dies and stays dead. Tony finds this out when he wakes up after World's Most Wanted, doesn't remember the past couple years of his life, and discovers that Steve is now dead. He experiences a lot of grief. So this is a canon-divergent AU running through the events of Avengers v4 and Hickmanvengers up through Superior Iron Man, in which we all get to find out exactly how far off the rails Tony can go when he continues not to have Steve around to keep him sane, functional, heroic, or sober.

This fic is also interesting as a historical document, because it's one of my earlier stories in the fandom. I actually wrote it when Hickmanvengers was still going, before Time Runs Out happened, and even before Superior Iron Man happened. The last thing in here that was based in canon is the Great Society incursion. At this point, we knew that Tony was going to be Superior but we didn't know how it was going to happen, what it was going to be like, or how Hickman's run was going to end. So I took a whole bunch of guesses, and I honestly like a few of them better than what we actually got.

Smell Like I Sound (Marvel Adventures: Avengers, Carol/Jess, 7,000 words, Explicit.)

This is a Carol/Jess fic with background Steve/Tony. Look, I didn't promise they were all going to be Steve/Tony. This is set in MA:A, mostly because I needed a canon fairly close to 616 where Carol and Jess hadn't canonically met, and Jess does exist in MA:IM. I wanted to tackle an issue I hadn't really seen explored much in Carol/Jess fic, which was "how do Carol and Jess actually get together if Jess's pheromones uncontrollably don't have good effects on women?" because that seems like it would be bad. (I mean, it would also be bad if Jess's pheromones did uncontrollably have good effects on women, but that would be a different story.)

(Because comics are gonna comics, I'm pretty sure that MA: IM Jess's pheromones do have negative effects on women. This is not necessarily the case in 616. We actually found out a couple years ago in 616 that Jess can in fact pheromone women in the fun way, which, yes, I do have a fic outlined based on this. You bet I do. I just have not yet written it yet.)

I don't write a whole lot of femslash, which in this fandom is partly due to The Carol/Jess Troll (thanks, dude) and it's partly because I have a femslash problem I've never figured out how to consistently solve, which is that I can't manage to write a whole lot of f/f that has the same kind of stakes and feelings and tropey idficcy goodness as the m/m that I like to write. I can't really even articulate the problem in a useful way; I just try writing f/f and then I read it back and mostly it's not the thing I like because what I end up writing just doesn't seem exciting to me. And I know it's possible for me to write the thing I like because this one is the thing I like! I did it here! It's just not a trick I can pull off consistently. But, anyway, this one was fun. I think I did this one right.

Not sure who has done this meme, but I'm gonna tag @blossomsinthemist and @isozyme.

[skellington-things]

“Long Live The Pumpkin Queen” Thoughts/Review

!SPOILERS AHEAD!

Hello, internet! As a hardcore “The Nightmare Before Christmas” fan since childhood I had some thoughts about the novel “Long Live The Pumpkin Queen” sequel in novel form. So, lets get into it shall we?

First of all, I had a very open mind when this book was announced. Despite me being a hardcore fan, I like to see what people have to create! I’m not going to be nit-picky or critical especially if it’s fan content. On the other hand though, this was touted to be a “sequel” to the movie and to be honest, I was disappointed. I had reasonable hopes but I’ll start off with the writing.

Now I’m no writer or author but the writing style was nice, I guess? I don’t really have much to say except the writing felt almost too detailed. It constantly focuses on Sally’s little detail that seem to repeat throughout the book such as when Sally picks at her seams in her hand or anything that has to do with her being a ragdoll. We know she’s a ragdoll. Speaking of Sally, I didn’t like the repetitive thoughts of insecurity she has that seems to repeat as well. I just wanted to say, “ok, I get that but let’s move on to other things”. I’ll get more into how Sally was written a little later in this post.

When it came to details when visiting the Holiday worlds, it was to be expected to be provided with detailed descriptions and I enjoyed learning about each holiday town. I just wish we had more time to explore them at a normal pace instead of rushing through each holiday town.

Moving on from the writing style, let’s go into the events! I’ll start off with what I expected which was the bare minimum, only to be fair to the author and leave room for an open mind. I expected more interaction with other holiday towns as I mentioned above but I also expected more character interaction. I understand that Sally is the main focus but I feel like we could have had her interact more with other characters, or at least Jack. I fully expected Jack to be more present in this book and focus more on Jack’s and Sally’s relationship together. Sure, did Sally need to find herself without her main purpose/description being married to Jack? Yes, but I also desired more interactions even if it wasn’t related to their relationship or Jack. The movie doesn’t touch on their chemistry as much and as a kid watching TNBC for the first time, I genuinely was confused about Sally’s feelings in the movie at first. I would’ve liked to see more development and even the Nintendo game “prequel” touched on their relationship when they met for the first time.

As for Sally herself? Oh boy, I have some thoughts. So, Sally in the movie seems to be an independent and free spirited character. She’s not afraid to stand up to Doctor Finklestein and continuously escapes his lab multiple times. In the movie (as well as my opinion) she doesn’t seem to be as insecure as she’s portrayed in the book. I fully expected Sally to need time to get used to being the new Pumpkin Queen but I feel like she would try her best to be herself, despite her insecurities. There’s just something about her in the movie that makes Sally seem like she knows who she is rather than be completely insecure. She did so many brave things in the movie like trying to help Jack despite Jack being oblivious, saving Santa, and standing up to Oogie Boogie when she was trapped. Her solutions to stop Jack from taking over Christmas (the fog scene) makes her come across as a ragdoll who’s confident in her decisions compared to the book. As for Sally’s heartbreak over Jack being cursed to sleep forever, I felt like she would have her moments of sadness and crying but she’s also the type of ragdoll to pick herself up and figure things out despite the obstacles in her way. There’s was just something about the “book Sally” that seemed a little off to me.

Alright, now it’s time to get into the “meat” of the book. I’ll start off by going in order of events.

When it came to the wedding I wish we could have more details such as Jack and Sally’s inner thoughts, the vows, and the townspeople’s reactions. That’s all I have to say about the wedding really.

Then we move onto their honeymoon in Valentine’s town. This played out as I expected and I thought it was cute. I enjoyed Ruby Valentine’s character although, for some reason I expected Cupid to reign over Valentine’s town but it also makes sense that the cupid’s are basically Valentine’s Town’s version of elves. I don't really have much to say about the honeymoon.

As for, when they get back and begin to prepare for Halloween, I also expected the townsfolk to be pushy about their new Queen and for some townsfolk to be a little jealous of Sally’s marriage to Jack. Although, I feel like overall most of the townsfolk would be supportive. When it came to the Vampire Prince and the witches giving Sally a new look, I also felt like it was in line with their characters despite them being background characters. The only thing I want to say is that I feel like the witches wouldn't be as mean about Sally’s appearance as they come across as witches who would be happy to design a new outfit for Sally. Maybe that’s just me though?

Now onto the sand man...he was somewhat boring and lackluster. Sure, he was creepy as he put everyone to sleep but I would have like more backstory to him instead of his backstory being quickly summed up later in the book. As for his physical description, I think it fits but something inside is telling me that the sand man would have been more creepy or at least, less human in appearance if we're trying to stick with a Burton styled character. I just wish we got more of his character development when compared to Oogie Boogie who seemed like a more fleshed out character despite him having little screen time if you know what I mean. Sand man was threatening but Oogie was super threatening.

The quick trips into other holiday worlds was..well…straightforward I guess? I don’t have much to say on that. It’s there and it’s cool I guess. When it came to Sally meeting the leprechaun I enjoyed the interaction and that event. It made sense but at the same time, it felt kind of pointless? My first reaction to Sally trying to figure out how to stop the sand man was that I would assume, Sally would go through the dream world first? Or would have a clue to visit there earlier. Speaking of how to defeat the sand man, I saw it coming from a mile away. Also, what was up with Zero just randomly grabbing Sally’s arm? Sure, he’s a dog but I felt like Sally finding the dream world door would’ve have played out much more intriguingly? Zero is pretty in character for most of the book, but at least Zero in the movie “asks Jack for consent” when Jack throws him one of ribs, haha. He’s a good boy.

Now for the dream world and the “plot twist” aka Sally’s parents. Before I get into Sally’s parents, I’ll talk about dream world first. Adding a dream world was an interesting plot point and I like the idea. It felt slightly out of place as the forest was originally about holiday’s and nothing else but dream world is a nice addition. I liked the development of dream world and everything about it. Yet, I have a question. There’s a dream world right? What about nightmares? Are they from dreamworld or does sand man have anything to do with nightmares? It was just a thought.

Now onto Sally’s parents…I have conflicted feelings. First of all, why did Sally need more backstory? The addition of Sally’s parents seemed like a cheap plot twist to me. I get that her parents are there as a story “aid” to help Sally discover who she really is but Sally’s backstory in the movie (simply being a creation) was fine enough. Speaking of her backstory, I need to rant about Doctor Finklestein before I get into Sally’s parents.

Now, don’t get me wrong Doctor Finklestein wasn’t the best, in fact he sucked at taking care of Sally, but the way I see it is that he created Sally to help take care of him as he aged. I don’t think he expected Sally to have a life of her own. That’s why he ended up letting Sally go and creating Jewel. Also, why did Finklestein desire the townspeople’s respect (as well as jack’s)? Like, Jack respected him from what I’ve seen in the movie? Ah, well, if you take into the unofficial game sequel to the movie, (Oogie’s revenge) Doctor Finklestein seems to be on good terms with Jack and the townsfolk. I don’t see Doctor Finklestein as an entirely bad character because he isn’t entirely good or bad. He’s a flawed character but the novel portrays Finklestein as a villain. It feels like it diminishes who Finklestein is. Even during the production of the movie, they deleted a scene where Oogie was originally Doctor Finklestein in disguise. Why? I can’t read the production team’s mind or even Burton’s but I like how Finklestein was neither a villain nor a hero. Also, let’s talk about how Finklestein knew about the dream world door but decided to tell no one. I get why he didn’t tell anyone in the novel but if Finklestein knew about the dream world, you think the movie would’ve touched on it a little? I’m going to take into account the unofficial game sequel to the movie for the play-station where after you deal with Finklestein as a boss fight and the St.Patrick day door shows up, he explicitly asks Jack what it is. As for Finklestein erasing Sally’s memory, it feels like the author decided to rewrite Sally’s backstory and character which is probably why I’m not a big fan of the plot twist in the book.

Alright, enough about the Doctor. I didn’t mind Sally’s parents as individual characters. I just thought it was a little strange that ragdolls took over to rule dream world. I get the concept of using dolls to help kids sleep better and for comfort but if these ragdolls are based off of Sally, wouldn’t it be a little out of place design wise? Ah well, anyways, by giving Sally parents her small development in the film is disregarded. By having Sally be a creation made to only serve Finklestein, Sally’s curiosity gets the better of her and she wants to see the world she was made in. She wants freedom and is an individual of her own and isn’t defined as simply being the Doctor’s creation/caretaker. Yet, I think the trope of Sally not remembering her true past is not a good trope to add. Like, using a cheap ol memory wipe trope wasn’t the best way to go about this in my opinion. When it came to Sally remembering her past and childhood, it felt out of character to be honest. The Sally her parents describe seems a little off. Other than that, her parents are cool I guess? I don’t have much to say about them as I’m happy they are loving and caring for her. I wish we could’ve gotten more time to know them in the book.

So, with Sally having a family and technically being the princess of dream world, I don’t mind that idea. I just didn’t like how the author went about the whole thing. To me, it makes Sally estranged from Halloween Town and Sally is now a random lost princess of dream world who just so happened to end up in Halloween Town and marry the Pumpkin King. It’s strange to me. I think it out of place and character because we already knew who Sally was in the movie. If anything, ever since I watched the movie I was more curious about Jack’s parents/family if he had any.

Moving onto the scene where Sally enters the human realm to find Queen Elizabeth 2….yeah, that was out of place and super weird. They could’ve added a different fictional Queen but when you add real life figures, that scene was just so weird to me because it was out of place. I didn’t really care for it.

In regards to defeating the sandman, I predicted the outcome when sandman first starting putting Halloween townsfolk to sleep. I was like “Sally! Make him fall asleep! You can’t wake up every townsfolk!”. Yeah, it was anticlimactic. But I’m not opposed to the idea of sandman needing sleep, I really like that idea. As for Finklestein’s punishment, I’m glad Jack was so defensive of Sally, which was expected but 100 years? I wish we knew how Halloween townsfolk aged. As for the addition of other doors, I have nothing critical to say. In fact, it makes sense. If we have Christmas town with iconic characters, why can’t there be more? You could add Krampus or even Jack Frost if you wanted into Christmas town. The addition of Father Time being briefly mentioned reminds me of that one Rankin Bass stop motion movie where Rudolph and other characters such as Frosty (and his family) go on an adventure with the New Year’s baby. It makes sense because If I remember correctly, Rankin Bass stop motion holiday films helped to somewhat inspire The Nightmare Before Christmas. I like the “crossover” of other characters and the potential for Jack and Sally to explore and go on new adventures. It develops the other Holiday worlds as well.

Overall, this book let me down. On one hand, I like the ideas the book presented but I didn’t like how everything played out. Including how Sally seemed to be a little out of character. It didn’t feel like Sally to me and it felt like I was reading bad fanfiction. Usually, I don’t mind badly written fanfiction’s of the Nightmare Before Christmas at all to be honest, but when it comes to an actual book, I feel like it’s different.

Speaking of fanfiction, I’m no writer but before this book came out for most of my life I wanted to write a fan sequel for fun. I still plan to do so but since I suck at writing, it’s more of a thing I’d like to do for fun. I’m not doing this to shoot down the novel at all. I just love the movie and since I’m older and have a better sense of writing as an adult compared to being younger, I feel more confident and clear about my ideas. I just wanted to mention this because I might post my own fanfiction/content sometime in the future. Anyways, I’ve concluded my thoughts and rants that I wanted to get out of my system! If you have any thoughts/general discussion don’t be afraid to voice them, good or bad! I want to hear what you all have to say about the book as well.

[bigskydreaming]

Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go. 

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you. 

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her  themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome. 

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily. 

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did. 

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking  his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame. 

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later. 

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

[pear-pies]

Placebo in Rock & Folk magazine - April 2003

Words by Jerome Soligny, photos by Carole Epinette

Wonky translation under the cut:

These three did it all. Shot with the QOTSAs and posed with Indo. They survived "Velvet Goldmine" and the Top Bab. They come back after the ordeal of the fourth album. Danger interview: “Jerome, what if you came out?” They ask our charming reporter.

"We do not regret anything"

Everything begins again with "Bulletproof Cupid", a punky instrument that pulls everything off. Then "English Summer Rein", mechanico-depressive spinning punctuated by twisted keyboards, and "Sleeping With Ghosts", the lament which advances while blistering during cooking, confirm the tone. Against all expectations, because you never know how will age the groups that the previous album installed at the Top, Placebo took over. And stuffed it in an iron glove. Further on, "The Bitter End" tumbles through yapping guitars which would stick to the hatches the thickest of the sailors. Be careful, Placebo is on the way out of being one. At the end of the record, Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal and Steve Hewitt do not even run out of steam. The cows. They drop a "Centerfolds" which frolic like a cynical top under a shower of saving doubts. What augur still other perspectives.

The fourth album: a horror for all who have faced it. Often a stupid trap. Returning from the Gothic directly inherited from the glam of pageantry and from these hasty and harmful certainties which congest the face and the veins, Placebo publishes its first real great disc. Oh, not the marvel of wonders, not the album from the third millennium, but something very strong, compact, tenacious in listening, which proves that the future is indeed there, in front, where the light is most blinding. Calfeucée in their Parisian hotel (the Costes, of course), our three lads do not make the blow of the revelation, of the luminous questioning. Simply, they now think with their heads, a good plan most often Likewise, reality no longer frightens them, and it is probably she who is hiding behind this "Sleeping With Ghosts" which relates the sorrows only for the better. melt into hopes At the moment when rock brings us back to life and when we just want to ask them everything, the Placebo have decided to say everything. Not even in a hurry, they settle down on the couch, ready to talk like never before. Despite new batteries embedded in the carcass, the Panasonic barely a Brian Molko: Hey Jerome, you came to talk to us this time when you had not come to the previous album ...

Rock & Folk: Uh yes but I was there for the first two, that says a lot, right?

Brian Molko: Certainly, I also believe that over time, we finally appreciate the true nature of the problem: we were mainly criticized for the sound of the previous album, which I can understand but, paradoxically, it is the one that brought us to the Top.

R&F: Legitimately, we have the right to expect a lot from the people we love: while "Black Market Music" sounded a bit like a sequel, this new record is all about a renaissance.

Brian Molko: Actually, we were finally able to live a little. After having existed in a small bubble for a very long time, we forced ourselves to take an eight-month break. The album-tour rhythm put us on the sidelines: we no longer had normal contact with anything. We were losing ourselves. We have fully lived the old cliché which claims that we spend the first years of our life writing a first record and six months on the second. It turned out to be very true. We had to get back to the situation of the first album, see friends, go shopping, look at the buildings in our city.

R&F: So the freshness would come from there ...

Brian Molko: Yes, and it was essential spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Steve Hewitt: We had to be in tune with reality again.

Brian Molko: In fact, we find ourselves in a bit of the same state of mind as when we released "Without You I'm Nothing", although "Sleeping With Ghosts" is a lot less gloomy. The heroin has since stopped leaking. In fact, I feel like I've pulled myself out of what I consider my second teenage years, between twenty and thirty. I conquered the self-destruction, exorcised some demons, understood what had happened to me. I held on to what I had learned. As a human being, I am now able to continue living, to try to answer the big questions posed by existence.

R&F: Maybe that's why the melodies are needed this time. It took me four records to get a favorite Placebo track.

The whole group in chorus: Which one?

R&F: "Protect Me From What I Want", of course ...

Brian Molko: The most paradoxical is that this song dates from the end of the "Black Market Music" sessions. I was not married at the time, but I was trying to get out of a particularly vicious divorce.just started. Then we wait for the lyrics, which don't arrive, it's rather intriguing. We especially wanted to avoid the big Rican producer side, we needed someone who shakes us up a bit. Jim could do that because he comes from dance and his pedigree is impressive. We have all his records at home, Bjôrk, Massive Attack, Sneaker Pimps and especially DJ Shadow. It is believed that guitar rock can only evolve by incorporating new genres, this is the only way to remain a modern rock band. At home, we practically only listen to hip hop.

R&F: Still, he didn't betray you.

Brian Molko: No because he actually brought out our rock side, which I'm particularly proud of. In fact, because we always wanted to control everything, it was not easy to be forced, to do certain things backwards, to walk on the head. But in truth, that's what we wanted: yes, there was some tension in the studio but we all took advantage of it. The challenge is necessary and it is also valid for the public. We opened up and rediscovered ourselves.

Stefan Olsdal (emerging from his chair): We found ourselves in front of the mirror, at the foot of the wall: someone had to kick our ass.

Brian Molko: Jim was like, "Why are you doing this?" We would answer him: "Because we always do it like that!" He would say: "All the more reason not to do it."

Stefan Olsdal: On the first day, he messed up all the demos, changed the tones, the tempos ...

R&F: Like Brian Eno ...

Steve Hewitt: Yeah, but with a lot more compassion. Eno is a bit (silence) ... We don't really like being told our actions, but at the same time, we are still young, still absorbing. Jim knew how to preserve us while making a modern sound.

R&F: Modern and rock'n'roll at the same time, a characteristic which does not necessarily apply to all the young groups in The which recycle the past gently but are convinced to have found the virus of the AIDS.

Steve Hewitt: Placebo doesn't belong to any current, has nothing to do with fashion.

R&F: You always pose as outsiders.

Brian Molko: It's the only way to survive.

Steve Hewitt: These bands, like The Strokes, play the nostalgia card.

Stefan Olsdal: And what happens next? I would not like to be in their place.

Brian Molko: If you want good New York pop, you better listen to Blondie.

R&F: In 2003, 11 seems that you have abandoned all the androgynous paraphernalia, sexual ambiguity, glam references ...

Brian Molko: I think today everyone knows what there is to know. Our sexual inclinations haven't changed, and we still wear makeup. It is just more expensive and better applied. We are ourselves, in our music and in private. I went through my travelo period (in French in the interview - Editor's note), and I understood that being androgynous was not wearing skirts. It is a way of being on the spiritual plane. It is not an image but a state of mind.

Steve Hewitt: It's like being punk, it's an attitude.

Brian Molko: At the same time, I don't regret any of my eccentricities. I grew up in the spotlight and it all kind of makes me smile.

Stefan Olsdal: People still talk to us about certain outfits or positions, as if it still shocks them.

R&F: Yes, and particularly in France, a particularly homophobic country which bumps heartily on gay artists.

Brian Molko: And you, coincidentally, you still hang out with.

Stefan Olsdal: Jérôme, it's coming out time (laughs) ...

Brian Molko: All that has to change, that all of France becomes gay (laughs)!

R&F: "Protect Me From What I Want" precisely, here is a title heavy with meaning. What was the idea behind this song?

Brian Molko: For me, it's a study of the pathological need people have to copulate, the search for meaning in copulation. As if bachelors or monogamists were aliens. As if we were only one when we were two. The song is about the fact that one relationship has destroyed me but I can't help but look for another ... why do I keep coming back to this?

R&F: Wow, we're bathing in philosophy here!

Brian Molko: Yes and it's the same elsewhere in the record: in "Plasticine", I insist on the fact that you have to be yourself above all while asking myself all these questions. Why do we have to do a lot of forbidden things, bad or harmful?

R&F: It's therapy in public.

Brian Molko: At least I find some balance in it. These are not songs about compassion or self-pity. They came out like this because it was vital for me. I am in this privileged situation where I can express myself and the world hears me. Otherwise, I would be really frustrated and I would have suffered a lot more in the last fifteen years.

R&F: Music saved your life.

Brian Molko: Sure.

Steve Hewitt: Everyone: I think we can say that. Without Placebo, we would not be not even alive.

Brian Molko: Spitting it all out is not necessarily the right solution. There are things with which to live. In fact, I've always been afraid to go see a psychiatrist ...

R&F: Yet, listening to you speak earlier, you could have the feeling that Jim Abiss acted a bit like a shrink with you.

Brian Molko: That's right. You could say that.

R&F: At a time when Bush and Blair want to play World War III, what attitude do you adopt? What do you think of these Englishmen who left for Iraq to constitute a human shield?

Brian Molko: Let's say we stand together. We participated in the March for Peace on February 14th with Damon Albarn and 3D from Massive Attack. We were also surprised that so few groups mobilized, which increased our desire to participate tenfold.

R&F: Do you consider that it is the role of the artist to give voice in such circumstances?

Steve Hewitt: Yes, in the sense that we can help with general motivation.

Brian Molko: I'm very interested in seeing if Blair is going to let Bush bomb Iraq with the British present on the soil of the country. If he ever allows that, the consequences will be dire.

R&F: It will only be one more religious war, in the name of oil and money ...

Brian Molko: It seems absurd that we can still fight for that. And curiously, nobody speaks more, or almost, of Bin Laden. Wouldn't it all come from him, by chance, as a huge consequence of September 11? On the other hand, we have such a feeling that Bush wants to finish the job that daddy started. Its image is so bad that it needs at least one war to restore its image.

Steve Hewitt: And reinvigorate its dying economy.

R&F: The method is lamentable, deceitful. Like those employed by the recording industry which claims to be doing well by selling pop in damaged boxes to ignoramuses.

Brian Molko: The ability of this job to ingest people, bribe them and then spit them out is impressive. This is what happened here at Canal +.R&F: Business is the beast.

Brian Molko: All these pre-made artists are young and naff ...

Steve Hewitt: They'll all end up in a labor camp for ex-pop stars.

R&F: Warhol was talking about fifteen minute glory, we're brutally passed to fifteen seconds.

Brian Molko: We should have called them Karaoke idols from the start.

Steve Hewitt: And it only works because of the TV ...

R&F: Who washes the poor, helpless brains.

Steve Hewitt: You can tell how much people want to think less

R&F: And spend less. For many, music should be free: one in five thirteen-year-olds doesn't know that a disc doesn't have to be a computer-burnt puck. Some are flabbergasted when they see a cover for the first time.

Stefan Olsdal: And those who don't buy records put pressure on those who have them to pass them on at all costs, just long enough to copy them.

R&F: Exactly.

Brian Molko: That's why we blame Robbie Williams so much. Scooping 80 million pounds off EMI and then declaring that pirating music is a fantastic thing just makes him want to stick a chunk in his face.

R&F .: And then piracy is not a matter of environment. It's not a suburban thing. There are rich kids who find it normal to burn 80 CDs during their weekend and sometimes sell them to their friends ...

Brian Molko: What do these people believe? That we are there, the face in the stream with a syringe stuck in the arm singing "La Vie En Rose"? And who will pay for our children's school? Not them, anyway. Our mentality is quite different: we always want to buy records from people we love, from our friends. Personally, we are partly out of the woods, but it will be particularly difficult for new groups to make a living from music in five or ten years.

R&F: Come on, we're not going to leave each other on this, a little humor won't hurt anyone. If you were to be banned from any of these three things, which would you choose: making music, making money or making love?

Steve Hewitt (almost tit for tat): I would stop making money, without hesitation. It's because I love music and sex too much. And then, well, you have to choose.

Brian Molko (completely overwhelmed): Oh damn, that's not true. What a dilemma!

R&F: No Brian, that doesn't count, make an effort (laughs).

Brian Molko: Ah, I don't know. And then if. I would stop making money and get on well with someone super rich.

R&F: Or you would be pimp ...

Brian Molko: Yes, that's it. Good plan.

Stefan Olsdal: Stop making love does not mean to stop loving ...

Brian Molko (preparing his shot): And we can always masturbate (general laughter).

Stefan Olsdal: OK then, I would stop making love.

R&F: Okay, it will be written in black and white for all eternity.

Brian Molko: Will we live long enough to regret it? This is the real question.

*COLLECTED BY JEROME SOLIGNY

[Inset, Trash Palace]

Already present on the first album by Trash Palace which he had adorned with his presence one unhealthy recovery of "I Love You, Me No More "in duet with Asia Argento, Brian Molko is coming to re-stack. This time he cosigns directly "The Metric System " with Dimitri Trash Palace Tikovoi, an electro saw boosted to bleeps fundamentals available in two remix and its clip on an enhanced single recently published at Discograph. The result is particularly (d) amazing and sounds good logical, like of Placebo cyber.Placebo in  Rock & Folk magazine - April 2003

[twistedlymad]

Welcome Home, Dearest Friend. (Ft. Everyone!)

You guys have waited for this for some time now and I truly, sincerely apologize to everyone.

To be honest, it took me three days to write this, I normally wouldn’t have taken this long but I had a bit of the writer’s block that prevented me from thinking of anything. For the first day, I was just staring at my laptop while I had an internal argument with my brain, forcing asking it to please work with me and deliver the long awaited sequel to my fic ‘It’s Time We Go Home.’

But here it is! I do hope the sequel meets everyone’s expectations! I hope you all enjoy it, thank you so much for requesting and waiting for this fic. I hope everyone has a lovely day!

You feel the cold air of the night hit your face and breeze through your hair as you flew in the sky. You took a deep breath, welcoming fresh air into your lungs and exhaling it out shortly after. At that moment, you had a good overview of the prestigious school that is Night Raven College.

Yes, you were back at the place that you so desperately wanted to leave a few months ago thanks to your best friends going to pick you up from your supposed ‘home’.

And you couldn’t be more thankful that they did.

“I missed everyone.” You said, tightening your grip on Ace.

“Yeah, we missed you too.” Ace replied to you as he focused on his flying.

“We all did.” Deuce added on, taking a glance at you. You gave him a smile before you all landed in front of your beloved Ramshackle Dorm. You got off the broom and proceeded to walk towards your dorm, however, you stopped yourself from entering.

“(Y/N)? What’s wrong?” Deuce asked you.

“Does… Anyone else know?” You turned to your friends, making them raise an eyebrow at you.

“Know? Know of what?” Ace asked.

“That I’ve returned.” You said, looking at them. They all shook their heads no.

“Only Headmaster Crowley knows that we went to try to persuade you, since we asked for his permission to do so.” Deuce said.

“Ah… Is that so?” You said, looking at the ground.

None of you moved, everyone just stayed deep in thought. It was as if time had suddenly froze.

Truth be told, you were feeling slightly anxious. You had just left behind your biological parents and family to be with a family that treats you better than them. Maybe it was because of your moral values and how you were taught to always love your family. But, you still were slightly unsure who was your true family.

The boys certainly took notice of your hesitation. They shared glances with each other for they were afraid that you would suddenly change your mind and want to go back to your ‘home’. They sincerely hoped that you wouldn’t do so, as it wasn’t easy living without you.

Suddenly, someone was laughing out loud. You looked up from the ground to see Ace laughing out loud.

“Ace? What’s so funny?” You asked.

“Ahaha, nothing, it’s just that… Remember the huge search party?” Ace said after calming down from his fit of laughter.

“Oh yeah! It was so chaotic!” Deuce said with a smile on his face.

“Search party?” You were confused, why was there a search party?

“We thought something bad happened to you when we found out you were missing, so, we had this giant search party just to look for you.” Deuce answered.

“It started when…” And Ace told you what had happened during your absence.

When they first found out that you were gone, Ace, Deuce and Grim searched high and low for you, afraid that something might’ve happened to you. When the other students, dorm leaders and vice dorm leaders caught wind of the news, a huge search party had been held in hopes of finding you. Everyone was worried and wanted to find you as soon as possible.

It wasn’t long before Crowley inspected the matter, after all, he couldn’t have his school in such a messy state. When he saw what everyone was doing, he assumed everyone was running around in his school without a purpose. But, something seemed off to him.

After all, it’s not like Riddle would run around carelessly, nor would Azul even run in the first place.

Leona awake and running? At this time? He should be taking his nap right now!

Kalim and Jamil flying on his magical carpet? Kalim never brings out his magical carpet out from his dorm!

Why is Vil searching in trash cans? Rook as well? Didn’t they swear to never even be a meter near a trash can?

Idia is out of his room?! AND climbing trees?!

Is… Malleus panicking?! But, he’s always seen with a calm expression all the time!

All in all, it wasn’t like them to act this way. Well, it wasn’t like them to act this way on a normal day. This made the headmaster so confused, he thought he was in an alternate universe.

That was, until Crowley managed to hear the words coming out from their mouth. It was a name. A very specific name indeed.

“(Y/N)!!” “(Y/N) Where are you?!” “(Y/N)!! This isn’t funny!!”

Crowley then understood everything and yelled everyone to stop what they were doing. Of course, everyone heard the loud voice of the headmaster and immediately stopped.

“Headmaster, not to be rude but, we’re trying to find (Y/N) right now.” Ace said to the headmaster.

“Everyone… You don’t have to.” Crowley said, dropping his head slightly.

“What? No, headmaster, you don’t understand!” Deuce said.

“(Y/N)’s gone!!” Grim continued, panic evident in his voice.

“No, (Y/N) isn’t gone.” Crowley stated calmly. He knew the students can’t really handle what he was going to say to them.

“Headmaster, what are you saying?” Riddle asked the caped figure.

“(Y/N)… Has gone back home.” Crowley said in a low voice.

“No, I’m certain he/she’s been kidnapped or something! If he/she went home, he/she would tell us yanno?!” Grim argued back.

“Yeah, it’s not like (Y/N) to not tell us if he/she’s going home!” Epel agreed with the furball. Your friends started to voice out their agreements as well.

“(Y/N) didn’t tell you all because he/she didn’t want to worry all of you. That’s why he/she left without a notice or a trace.” Crowley said.

“B-But!” Grim tried to protest, he couldn’t believe his ears after all. The one who accepted him, took care of him and loved him was gone? It couldn’t be true… right?

“(Y/N) is back in her home and that is final. Now, go back to your classes.” Crowley said before retreating back to his office.

Everyone was in shock. You left without anyone noticing nor even saying goodbye? They were kind of disappointed, but they knew if it was your wish to do so, so be it.

“Come on Grim, let’s get to class.” Ace said to the furball as everyone was leaving.

“Y-Yeah… Class…” Grim replied in a low and soft tone. He’s still in shock after all. As much as he wanted to believe Crowley was joking and that you were actually in Ramshackle Dorm, he knew it wasn’t true as Crowley would be panicking if you were actually gone. But, he wasn’t, so that must’ve meant that what Crowley had said was the truth. He felt like as if he had been slapped and brought back to reality.

And so, everyone carried on with their lives.

Or… At least tried to.

Inside, they knew that you accepted you as a piece of their world. (Hi, I’m very subtle with my references yes? UwU) Your presence was so strong, they couldn’t have ever imagined living without you. Yet here they are, living without you.

They tried to not have their true feelings show up on their faces. They tried going on about their daily lives without a care. They tried to not let your absence disturb their mood whatsoever.

Believe me Reader-san, they tried very hard. But, it wasn’t working. No matter how much they try, they feel a void in their hearts.

A void… Only you could fill.

Over time, their moods began to deteriorate.

The dorm leaders will be seen with their heads buried deep in their work, trying to distract themselves from your absence, even Kalim has gone silent. They didn’t want to be bothered at all by your absence. But, no matter how focused they were, they couldn’t do it. They knew they had built a good relationship with you since their overblottings. You always had little chats with the dorm leaders whenever you manage to catch them alone. You would always put a small smile on their faces whenever you started to have small talks with them and you would always smile back to them. They treasured your relationship with them dearly, after all, they were dorm leaders, not everyone who approached them was as willing as you. When they invited you to either have tea or just to chat with them, you accepted without any hesitation at all. They were glad that you weren’t scared of them even after seeing how dangerous and powerful they can get, especially during their overblottings. They were glad, that you were there to snap them out of their state, they were glad that they got to live safe and sound because of you.

Now, without you, they fear they can never have those quaint little walks and talks anymore.

The vice dorm leaders and upperclassmen are doing their best to support their respective dorm leaders. But, no matter how hard they tried to cheer their dorm leaders up, nothing works. They too had a strong relationship with you, thanks to their respective dorm leaders, they also spent a lot of time with you whenever you came to their dorms for tea or just to hang out with their first years. You would also lend a hand to them whenever they needed it, let it be taking care of the dorm leaders or the other residents of the dorms, you were always happy and ready to help them. And also, thanks to them, you learned quite the set of skills in cooking! You couldn’t help it, the vice dorm leaders are always seen in the kitchen, prepping for food for their dorms, the smell and looks of the food lured you in and you started to help them instead. Of course, you get to taste test the final products.

With that being said, they too felt a little moody without you around. After all, you’ve helped them so much.

Your best friends, the first years, they had it bad. Sure, for the first two days Ace, Deuce, Epel, Jack and Sebek went on their merry way, with Ace and Deuce fighting over everything, Epel trying to be silent but he secretly wants to join in on the fights, Jack trying to separate the fight and Sebek was worried for Malleus instead of helping to separate the two quarrelling Heartslabyul first years. But then, they began to notice that it wasn’t the same without you. Jokes weren’t as funny anymore, classes were more boring than usual, activities and outings weren’t as exciting and fun as they used to be. After classes, your friends would immediately go back to their respective dorms instead of hang around on campus. They would be so much more silent and gloomy those days and like their dorm leaders, they distracted themselves with work. But, every time they would still think of you. How could they not? Almost everything reminded them of you. The wind that would gently breeze through your hair, the notes that you gave to them while they fell asleep in Trein’s classes, the potions that you messed up during Crewel’s classes.

To them, you were literally a piece of their world. (I’ll stop now :’) ) And without you, their world is incomplete.

Grim, the creature you loved dearly and took care of had it the worst. To him, you were the reason why he was even able to be at this prestigious college in the first place. Heck, you gave him more things than anyone ever did in his entire life! You cared for him with all your heart and so did he! So, why didn’t you tell him, the one who loved you the most, about your departure? WHY?! Why did you exclude him from something so important to you?! He was heartbroken at first, he should’ve noticed your change in attitude a few days ago but why didn’t he? He was disappointed in himself for not noticing and for not caring enough. Every day, after classes, he would immediately come to Ramshackle Dorm and sit in front of the building, looking at the door, wishing, hoping that it would open once again with you on the other side, your smile greeting him as it always did first thing in the morning and receiving a hug from you like any other day. He wanted more than anything to tell you that he loved and cared for you before you left.

But, it was too late now, wasn’t it?

Everyone’s mood didn’t go unnoticed by Crowley of course. He knew how your departure had affected his students, because it had also affected him too. You see, Crowley treated you like his very own child. When he let you and Grim stay at Ramshackle Dorm, you gave him a smile that melted his heart immediately. He knew he must protect you since you had no magic after all and in order to survive in Twisted Wonderland, one must at least know the basics of magic right?

He provided you with shelter, food and clothing, like any parent would. And you looked to him as if he was your father as well! You actually loved to have tea with him and tell him all sorts of stories you went through involving you and his students. He treated you as family and you did as well. So, your absence has also affected him gravely.

At last, no one could take it anymore.

On the third day of your departure, Ace and Deuce walked past Ramshackle Dorm after classes one day to find Grim at his spot, looking at the door again. Once they saw his expression, they felt slightly angered. They couldn’t bear to see the creature so broken.

“I can’t take this anymore!!” Ace suddenly yelled out. Deuce and Grim turned to look at him.

“Ace…” Deuce said.

“I can’t live like this… It’s… It’s not like us!” Ace said.

“You’re right… We need (Y/N) back.” Deuce replied, deep in thought.

“How do we do that?” Ace asked as he went to pick up the gloomy furball.

“Fgnaaaaa, it’s not like (Y/N) would want to come back even if we found her.” Grim said, but Ace and Deuce ignored him, they could at least try to get you back right?

“Why don’t we ask Headmaster for any options?” Deuce said.

“Well, we could give it a try.” Ace said. “Come on Grim, we can’t give up hope yet.” And so, the three of them set off to find the Headmaster.

“You… Want to get (Y/N) back?” Crowley asked the two students and one creature that stood in front of him.

“Yes, we would like to try.” Deuce said.

“… You do know it was (Y/N)’s wish to return home right?” Crowley asked again.

“We are aware.” Deuce replied again.

“What if (Y/N) doesn’t want to come back?”

“Look! No matter what happens, we would like to try! And even if (Y/N) doesn’t want to come back, as long as he/she’s happy, we’ll be satisfied!” Ace said with a loud voice, lowering his head. Deuce and Grim doing the same.

“We… just want to know (Y/N)’s happy back home.” The three of them said at the same time.

This… Shocked Crowley. Never has he seen any students at Night Raven College doing this much for a student who couldn’t even use magic. He was truly touched. The headmaster suddenly stood up, making the three first years jump a little.

“Right, go grab a broom and meet me in the field.” Crowley said.

“… And that’s how we arrived in your world.” Ace said. You were flabbergasted, everyone felt that way about you? You silently scolded yourself for not leaving a note or notice informing them about your departure, but most of all, you couldn’t help but feel like you were guilty of making them feel that way. You were so sorry to everyone.

“So… How did you guys find me?” You asked the trio.

“You took the ghost camera with you right?” Ace said with a smile.

“The camera emits magical energy. Since you said your world didn’t have magic, we felt the magic emitting off from the camera and found your home right away.” Deuce continued. You were shocked, the camera itself emitted magic energy and you didn’t know at all.

“But… We… Wanted to ask.” Ace spoke up.

“Why… Were you crying?” Grim asked. You looked at everyone as you took a gulp.

“Ah… You saw… Well…” You started and told what had happened after going back ‘home’.

After hearing the reason why you were silently crying in your room when they went to your room, Ace, Deuce and Grim could feel their blood boiling. How dare they do that to you? You weren’t a slave! You were someone special! Someone that matters and needs love! Someone that they care for with their hearts!

“Hah… I don’t think they even noticed I was gone anyway. Heck, they probably were glad that I was gone.” You said, ending your side of the story. You looked up to see your friends looking at you in worry.

“But, believe me, I remembered you guys every single moment when I was ‘home’. I’m so sorry for leaving in the first place, I didn’t mean to make you guys feel that way. I’m so sorry.” You said, looking down and letting tears fall out from your eyes.

“(Y/N)…” Ace, Deuce and Grim said, before reaching out to hug you.

“It’s okay, you don’t need to apologize, as long as you’re happy, we’re happy.” Deuce said.

“Yeah, we couldn’t bear to see the one that brought smiles upon our faces be sad.” Ace continued.

“Thanks you guys…” You smiled and hugged them back.

After a few seconds, you guys pulled away from the hug.

“Come on, let’s go in, I’m pretty tired.” You said, walking up to Ramshackle Dorm’s main door and opening it.

Only to find a group of people waiting inside. No, wait. They were everyone you ever knew at Night Raven College!

The dorm leaders, Riddle, Leona, Azul, Kalim, Vil, Idia and Malleus.

The upperclassmen and vice dorm leaders, Trey, Cater, Ruggie, Jade, Floyd, Jamil, Rook, Lilia and Silver.

Your best friends, Jack, Epel and Sebek.

Even the staff, Crowley, Crewel, Trein, Vargas and Sam.

Even little Ortho!

“(Y/N)!!!” The group except the staff rushed to you and tackled you, Ace, Deuce and Grim in a hug.

“Welcome home, (Y/N)!!” Everyone said to you while hugging you. You smiled with tears in your eyes before saying a response to them.

“Yeah, I’m home.”

[lupinlongbottom]

Practically a Weasley pt. 2

Charlie Weasley x Reader

Summary: Home for the holidays! Finally, after the end of a bitter war, the Weasleys have some much needed family time to catch up on. The holidays are the perfect time to celebrate family, no? Charlie and (Y/N) seem to agree. 

Word Count: 3.8k+

Warnings: None

A/N: A much anticipated part 2 to my Practically a Weasley fic! I love writing for Charlie. Dragon boy just doesn’t get much love, does he? Also Fred ain’t dead. My heart couldn’t handle that if it were true. 

Part 1 ... Part 1.5  ... Part 3 ... Epilogue

__

The Burrow was fluttering with delight, the holidays had been finally sworn in with the arrival of the entire Weasley clan. How long had it been since most of the redheaded family sat under one roof, let alone one table? With everyone’s various lines of work and hectic schedules, it was a surprise and a holiday miracle even half of them had shown up.

Bill was enchanting the younger children with vast stories of his work as a curse-breaker (with a little exaggeration, of course). Molly and Arthur were bickering about him bringing yet another Muggle artifact home for the holidays. And Charlie? He sat quietly at the end of the table, humming along to Celestina Warbeck’s newest album, gingerly holding (Y/N)’s hand with delight.

Nothing had changed, not really, not ever.

“How do you know all of the words already? She just released these songs like, two days ago?” (Y/N) chuckled, taking a small sip of the hot beverage in front of her.

“I have a perfect memory,” Charlie mused, rubbing his thumb in circles on the back of her hand. “Or, did you forget?”

“I suppose I did, Mr. Weasley.” (Y/N) grinned, eyes flitting across the various freckles under his brown eyes.

“Such a shame, you really ought to know better, Mrs. Weasley.” A soft peck danced across their lips.

Ah. So something had changed.

“Ew.” Fred spat, eyeing his older brother down from across the table.

“Double ew,” George retorted. “Get a room.”

“They’re married, you gits,” said Ginny, bumping Fred in the arm. “Let them be.”

“She’s my best friend!” groaned Fred.

“Wow,” muttered George, a hand rising to his chest. “After all we’ve been through, Freddie? I’m gutted.”

(Y/N) chuckled quietly at the twins, now not-so-playfully fighting each other across the table. “They’ll never grow up, will they?” Whilst the twins began their fight to the death via dull forks, the newlywed couple pulled away from one another for the first time in hours.

“No, I reckon not,” Charlie hummed, rising from his seat. “If they’re going to continue on like this, I might as well pour myself a glass of firewhisky. Did you want one, love?”

Silently, (Y/N) shook her head, allowing Charlie to flee the scene for a few moments. The album had finally reached the end of the track, resulting in Molly starting it right back up. Ron and Ginny groaned gaudily, as this had been the fifth time she had done so this evening. The two shut right up after Bill had sent them both a quick and sharp glance.

“I must say,” Molly began. “I never imagined the lot of us sitting around one table again,” The war had reached its climatic end only a few months prior, wounds starting to finally heal. “I’m truly blessed to have almost my entire family together for the holidays—”

“—minus Perce, Fleur and Harry, of course!” George piped up.

“Right,” Molly cleared her throat. “As I said, almost the entire family.”

“Fleur sends her regards, truly. But with the condition her mother is in right now, she needed to be home,” Bill responded, again apologizing for his wife’s lack of attendance. “And Percy and Harry will be joining us in the coming days, no?”

“Yeah,” Ron nodded, leaving the absence of his brother and best friend at that. “Harry���s got some errands to run, or whatever. I reckon he’s out buying gifts even when we asked him not to.” Ron chuckled.

“Well, regardless of who isn’t here, we still have a large family. A growing family at that!” Arthur rejoiced, causing (Y/N)’s face to drop slightly. “It’s (Y/N)’s first holidays as an official Weasley!”

(Y/N) felt her face flush. A sigh of relief. “Oh Arthur, that’s hardly anything to celebrate…”

“Hogwash,” Charlie retorted, returning with his promised firewhisky, and a glass of water for (Y/N). “You can’t escape now, you’re sorta in it for life, yeah?”

“I feel like it’s already been a lifetime, love.” She chuckled. “Besides, just because we signed some stupid paper and wear these rings—”

“—wonderfully selected by your adoring husband.” Charlie mused, wriggling his left hand. The cool silver shone off his hand, a matching band with (Y/N)’s delicate ring.  

“You know what I mean, Charles.” snickered (Y/N). “I mean, I’ve practically been a Weasley since second year!”

“It’s true,” George paused, setting his fork down. “I mean, we would’ve married her first but—”

“—we were too busy being repulsed by the thought!” Fred finished, poking his tongue out slightly.

(Y/N) returned the gesture.

“You lot will never grow up,” said Molly, shaking her head. “Whatever the case, I’m truly blessed to have another daughter.” 

“Mum, just remember to think about the daughter you’ve always had, yeah?” Ginny laughed, causing the entire table to join in.

__

Hours passed, with it, a final read through of (Y/N)’s latest project. The sequel to The Distracted Dragon. While she had intended to finish the novel earlier, something larger than herself had erupted in their little world that needed attending to. The various fans of the first story were surely gutted, but to be completely fair to all involved, a war seemed like a pretty eminent reason to move the newest addition on the back burner.

“So you’re telling me… Bancroft gets a girlfriend?” Ron asks, looking to (Y/N) for an answer. She hesitantly gave a nod. “That’s the moral of the story? Get yourself a girlfriend and all your problems will be solved?”

“No,” Fred sniffed, moved by the book. “Ronnie, the moral is that sometimes we need help from another person to grow and accept our past!” With a loud honk into a tissue, he continued to weep.

“Nah, I still think that Harriet solved his problems.” Ron shrugged, popping a crisp into his mouth.

As Fred began to argue with Ron louder, chiming in about Hermione, Charlie gave (Y/N) a simple nod, aiming upwards towards the stairs. She got the hint quickly and excused herself.

“Tired of it yet?” asked Charlie, grabbing (Y/N)’s hand gingerly as they walked up the stairs towards his room. Bill had offered to stay in the twins room while (Y/N) was here, letting the newlyweds to have a space to themselves.

“No, not yet,” replied (Y/N). “Though,” She opened the door. “I’m rather pleased at how keenly Fred took to the book.”

“Ah,” He sat on the bed, waving his wand to shut the door once more. “He’s a bit of a romantic, no?”

“Fred? A romantic?” She laughed, pulling on her pajamas. A simple purple nightie, just touching the tops of her knees. “As if. He’s just… more in tune with the details I reckon.”

“Details… sure. Whatever you say, flower.” Charlie began to pull his socks off, eyeing his wife up and down. “You know… I bet the entire lot downstairs is going to be busy for a while.”

“Oh?” (Y/N) mused, flicking the lights off. “Busy, you say?”

Charlie nodded. “With Ron and Fred’s arguing, they sure drown out the sound, no?” He wriggled his eyebrows, climbing under the quilt next to his wife. A gentle hand caressed her thigh lightly.

“Charlie,” (Y/N) sighed, almost annoyed. “As lovely as the thought is,” He began peppering kisses to her neck, slowly down to her collarbone. “We shouldn’t.”

“Love,” more kisses. “It’s not like we’ve never fooled around up here before,” said Charlie, leaving a suckling mark below (Y/N)’s ear. “You love the risk.”

(Y/N) gently pushes Charlie away. “You’ve had too much firewhisky,” said (Y/N), pecking her husband once on the lips. “And I’m not feeling up for it.”

“Flower, I barely had any firewhisky,” he laughed. “Not nearly as much as you drink, well, normally anyhow,” a puzzled look adorned his freckled face. “Why didn’t you drink tonight? It’s Christmas Eve!”

“Are you saying I need to drink to have a good time?” (Y/N) accused, only half offended.

“Of course not! But you do find any and all reasons to have a nice drink at gatherings like these, it's odd, s’all,” He shrugged. “I mean, it’s a holiday! With the family. Our family. What better time to drink?”

“I didn’t feel like it.” (Y/N) mumbled, flopping down under the covers, turning away from her husband.

“I sense that you’re lying, love.” Charlie said, rubbing her arm gently. “You’re my wife…” mewled Charlie, hanging onto the last word longer than usual. “I’m keen to noticing these things.”  

“Oh yeah?”

“Indeed,” he quipped. “You have a rather easy tell, too.” Charlie gave a quick side glance in (Y/N)’s direction, smirking. “You tend to push your hair behind your ears, bite your lip and flick your eyes ever so slightly.”

“I do that all the time.” mumbled (Y/N).

“Does that mean? No…” Charlie gasped. “Could you’ve been lying to me the whole time I’ve known you?”

“Charlie…” (Y/N) groaned.  

“Okay, fine,” He laughed. “But you’ve been acting off these last couple of weeks. Not drinking, barely getting any sleep—”  

“—which I’m trying to do right now, thank you!” (Y/N) quipped, pulling the covers higher.

“Your mood has been real shit lately too. One moment you’re all smiles, the next you want to send me to the dog house just for looking at you.” Charlie sighed. “And I know it’s not,” his voice lowered to a whisper. “‘that time of the month’ yet, because it was last week, right?”

“No, and stop talking about my period like you’re afraid to say it.”

“Huh… It’s normally around the third week of the month, no?” He mumbled. With a gentle shake of his head, he continued. “Flower, all I’m trying to say is that even when you went to the doctor, they didn’t diagnose you with anything, right? I’m just worried something is wrong with you, (Y/N)”

“Nothing is wrong with me, Charlie.”

“Nothing? You run to the loo to empty your lunch like it’s your job,” He laughed. “I’ve never seen you like this. It’s almost as if—”

He stopped.

“Charlie?” (Y/N) turned around to check on her husband. Charlie just sat, staring forward. “Honey?” 

“(Y/N),” He continued to stare forward. “Are you…?”

“Darling,” She sat up, gingerly grabbing his hands. “Look at me.” 

Charlie’s eyes were brimming with tears, begging to be let go.

“I wanted to tell you tomorrow, a Christmas present,” (Y/N)’s eyes were swimming with matching tears. “But I guess one present early couldn’t hurt, no?” 

His eyes flicked back and forth from his wife’s, waiting for any sign of an answer. (Y/N) nodded her head slightly, fighting back the tears. Charlie wrapped his arms around his wife, hugging her tightly, afraid to let her go. “You’re kidding!” A flurry of kisses brimmed (Y/N)’s head, forming a crown upon her temple. “Love! This is a great—no—the best gift you could’ve given me”

“You’re excited?” asked (Y/N), giggling in her husband’s embrace.

“Of course I’m excited,” Charlie pulled away slightly, meeting his brown eyes with (Y/N)’s, darting between the two rapidly. “A baby. Our baby.”

In an instant, their lips met. Softly at first, crescendoing slowly into an intensity as bright as the stars above, burning hot at the sight. The moment was broken only by the parting for air, quickly returning to the fire before. Was it the thrill of their family below? Or the joy of the family growing between the two? Perhaps it was a bit of both.

“How long?” asked Charlie, rubbing (Y/N)’s upper arm gently. “I mean, how far along are you?”

“Remember that Quidditch match your friend Andre invited us to?” (Y/N) giggled.

“I don’t remember much of the match,” Charlie said, scratching his head. “Come to think of it, you pulled me into an empty stall and we—” His cheeks flushed, burning up to the tips of his ears. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” (Y/N) laughed, brushing Charlie’s hair out of his eyes. “Andre’s team won in the end, by the way.” Another laugh.

“Well, I suppose we both scored,” Charlie joined in the laughter. “But that was about two months ago, no?”

“Something like that. I found out last week at the doctor’s office,” said (Y/N). “It was the hardest thing to keep from you! I was so scared that—”    

“—that I’d be upset?”

“Something of that sort, yeah,” (Y/N) mumbled. “Of course I was being a real idiot about the whole thing, I realized that the second you figured it out.” 

“Love, I come from a family of nine,” Charlie held his breath. “Now, that’s not to say I want to rival my parents in the baby-making contest, but I’ve always wanted a little piece of that happiness. Especially with you.” 

“Charlie if you keep saying shit like that I’m going to cry,” (Y/N) warned, choking back tears, a common theme in the past few minutes. “I can’t believe I was even remotely worried.”

“What was there to be worried about?” Charlie asked, stroking (Y/N)’s hair, fingers twisting the ends lightly.  

“I’m not sure. We just got married a little over a year ago, after a bloody war had started no less—”

“—to be fair, we got married during the war.”

“I suppose we technically eloped before the war was over.” (Y/N) mumbled, tracing her hand up Charlie’s chest, resting gently.

“We also got married before Bill,” Charlie laughed. “Not an important detail, but one that I like to rub in his face.”

“Besides your points,” (Y/N) rolled her eyes. “We’re newlyweds! We’re young! I mean, we never even really had the whole ‘baby’ talk before. I was worried we weren’t ready, hardly after a war,” (Y/N) gulped. “I was worried you’d be scared.”

“Love, of course I’m scared. Babies are terrifying,” said Charlie. “With their little hands and tiny feet.” He feigned a grimace, clearly joking. “But you’re right. We are young, but that just means more years of being a family, no?” 

“I guess…”

“Now, you’re also right about the ‘baby’ talk. We haven’t really talked about it,” Charlie looked down at (Y/N). “Let’s have it now.”

“I think it’s a little late for that.” (Y/N) giggled.

“Do you ever want to have kids?” Charlie asked, ignoring his wife’s growing laughter.

“Yes.” 

“Do you ever want to have a child together?”

“Of course.”

“Then that’s all that matters, right?” Charlie said, his brown eyes meeting (Y/N)’s. “Who cares if it’s a little before we might have planned? I know that we’re going to love the shit out of our child.”

“I know you’re right,” (Y/N) mumbled. “But you don’t have any worries about all of this?”  

“Only one,” said Charlie. “I mean, if it’s not a boy to take on the Weasley name, I may consider a divorce.” Charlie hummed, smirking lightly. 

“Charlie!” (Y/N) slapped his chest rather firmly, eliciting a slight groan from the redhead. “If you keep joking like that, I may consider divorce first.”

“Flower, you know I could never divorce you,” Charlie laughed, placing a kiss to his wife’s temple. “Besides, with the amount of brothers I have, the Weasley name is rather safe I reckon,” Another kiss to her temple. “Come on, let's get some sleep.” It took only a few fleeting kisses, happy murmurs and mumblings before the couple finally retired for the night.  

—

“Well, look at the lovebirds!” George sang from the kitchen table, setting his coffee mug down, eyeing up (Y/N) and Charlie descending from the stairs. “Unusually well rested. Obviously not taking advantage of their own room I see.”

“George,” said Molly, sternly shooting a glance at her son. “Happy Christmas you two.”

“Happy Christmas, mum,” said Charlie, placing a peck to his mother’s cheek. “Happy Christmas George.”

“Yeah, yeah. Christmas or whatever,” George sipped from his mug. “You lot slept in a bit, the rest of the family is outside. You know, completing a family tradition and whatnot. So disgraceful.”

“Ah, but the real disgrace, George, is the fact you also are missing out on the snow angels,” (Y/N) chirped, grabbing a plate of hot breakfast from Molly. “Besides, everyone’s coming in for breakfast soon anyway. No one can resist Molly’s cooking.”

“Oh (Y/N), you humor me,” Molly laughed, opening the window. “Breakfast!” She called out to the rest of her family. One by one, the clan filed into the kitchen, sitting in their respective seats.

“Mum, you outdid yourself again! This food looks delicious.” Bill said, piling a load of eggs onto his plate. He handed the skillet over in Ginny’s direction, eliciting a scowl to the yellow mush beneath her nose.

“Kiss-up.” Ginny mumbled, immediately passing the cooked eggs over to Ron.

The rest of the family began eating, enjoying a rare moment of silence in the Burrow. Only sounds of scraping forks and the occasional burp echoed through the walls. Fred and George were the first to finish their plate, diving into another round of home cooking immediately after. Charlie and (Y/N) sat together, gently hold each other’s hands while they ate, Charlie sitting at the end.

“While you’re all sitting down, I suppose now’s the best time for your gifts!” said Molly, cleaning up the table. She quickly exited the kitchen only to reappear with a rather large bag. “Careful not to get any muck on them, I don’t want to do any washing today.” With a flick of her wand, the colorful stack of wool dispersed evenly among the family, a jumper settling in everyone’s lap.

“Jumpers? Oh boy, what a surprise!” George laughed.

“Really shocked our socks off, mum!” Fred added, unfurling his pile of purple.

“Oh hush,” Molly smirked. “Just go put them on and humor your mother, would you? You seem to find every other opportunity to do so.”

The twins groaned and pulled the fabric over their heads, both of the violet jumpers were adorned with their store’s logo on the front. Bill’s had a niffler, Ron’s had a Chudley Cannons print, Ginny’s had two crossing brooms and Charlie’s had (not surprising anyone) a large white dragon.

“What about yours, love?” said Charlie, elbowing (Y/N) slightly, the light blue wool rubbing against her arm. She turned to face him, the green jumper was decorated with a book and quill, the cover oddly resembling her first book. “Wow! That looks amazing!” He exclaimed. “Mum, how do you keep making these year after year?”

“With patience and a whole lot of love.” Molly smiled.

“Her enchanted knitting needles help too,” Arthur added, brushing biscuit crumbs off his new maroon sweater, ignoring the icy glare from his wife. “Besides, it’s a tradition.”

“A tradition getting harder every year,” Molly sighed. “Thankfully none of you are getting married any time soon, no need to worry about adding any other jumpers to my long list!” She laughed.

“Besides for next year, of course.” said Charlie offhandedly. (Y/N) froze.

“Next year? What’s next year?” Bill asked.

“Yeah, I don’t reckon Fred or George are going to meet anyone by next Christmas.” said Ron.

“Hey!” The twins exclaimed.

“Well…” Charlie looked up, all eyes were on him. A quick glance was given to (Y/N), who shared an equally pale face as him. He shrugged, raising his eyebrows. “You never know when people can meet each other, no? I mean, (Y/N) and I met in a coffee shop of all places!”

“Charlie…” (Y/N) began.

“Hell, we even eloped! Do you know how easy it is to do that?” Charlie continued, nervously bumbling longer sentences. “We got married in like, an hour once we set our sights on it!” He chuckled loudly, trying to drown the attention away from his sweat.  

(Y/N) stood up, placing a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Before Charlie continues to blabber like a right idiot,” she said, shutting her husband up successfully. He sighed loudly. “I’m pregnant.” The entire table sat in stunned silence.

“That’s amazing!” Fred shouted, breaking the silence, jumping from his seat. “My best friend is having a baby!” He wrapped (Y/N) in a large hug, gripping her tightly.  

“Again, am I chopped liver?” George laughed, running over to join the hug. “A baby! Promise that you’ll name him George! Or Fred. Not terribly picky on that.”

“Boys! You shouldn’t hug (Y/N) that hard,” said Arthur. The twins loosened their grip slightly. “Congratulations you two,” He glanced between the happy couple. “Children are a blessing.”

“Is that why you had seven of them?” Ron asked, getting slapped on the shoulder by his mother.

“Oh (Y/N),” Molly cooed, fighting back her tears. "My first grandchild! We couldn’t be more thrilled for you!” She ran over to Charlie, embracing him in the warmest bearhug she could’ve mustered. “I can’t wait to start knitting their jumper! It’ll be so tiny I won’t mind the extra on the list.”        

“How long have you been keeping that secret, Charlie?” Bill asked, smiling at his brother, amused at the kisses their mother was placing on Charlie’s cheek.

“He’s barely known a day,” (Y/N) frowned in Charlie’s direction. He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve only known for a week. It’s still early, but we’re excited.”

“I hope it’s a girl,” Ginny added. “That way we’d finally be on our way to have a boys versus girls Weasley quidditch match!” 

“With my quidditch skills and (Y/N)'s creative mind? I’m sure they’d be an amazing quidditch player!” Charlie bubbled in delight. “Though, how young would be too young to get them on a broom?” 

“Charlie! We’re not putting our baby on a broom!” (Y/N) scolded. “Besides, they could easily get my quidditch skills.” 

“But you don’t have any quidditch skills?” Fred said, cocking his head.

“You can hardly keep yourself up on a broom!” George added.

“Exactly,” (Y/N) hummed, sitting down, a hand resting on her barely existing bump. “I say we stop hypothesizing and projecting onto the baby. Whatever they choose to be and do will be great…” (Y/N) sighed. “Because Charlie and I are the best, so our baby is going to be the best baby ever.”

“Nailed it, darling.” said Charlie, high-fiving his wife.

“You two really deserve each other.” Ron groaned.

“We do,” Charlie hummed, beaming down to his wife. “We really do.”

With the big news out of the way, the Weasley’s enjoyed the rest of their holiday morning, welcoming Percy and Harry home later in the afternoon. Once the two were caught up on gifts and laughter, the family had finally found peace in their holiday. No more big secrets, no more stressing about keeping said secrets. Just a relaxing and calming holiday before the whirlwind of parenthood whisked Charlie and (Y/N) up into a tizzy. But they were ready.

They’re Weasleys, after all.  

__

General Tag List: @maralisa124 , @leighxlover , @hey-its-me-rai , @missihart23 , @biatheintrovert , @luna-xxxxx , @chocolaterumble, @why-am-i-sad-and-sleepy

Charlie Weasley Tag List: @sungoddessra , @crescent-ia , @phantom-pheonix , @dccomicnerd-world , @marveltrash99 , @graymountaingal, @storiesbycaroline, @mytinybaguette , @garbdump

want to be added to a tag list? hmu in the replies or ask box with what characters you’d like to be tagged with!

[random-mha-thoughts]

Weirdos (LoV x Reader)

Pairing: LoV x Reader, platonic relationship

Shigaraki, Twice, Dabi, toga, Kurogiri x Reader

I’m combining two anon requests I got for this one (they were kinda similar and I have a lot of requests to go through):  “LOV x young reader (fem or genderfluid). reader just wants to be loved. Toga's like a big sister, Dabi's a big brother, Shigaraki is that one gay cousin and Kurogiri is the father figure (hey no stOp that). Shenanigans ensue” and “Hello love! I just read sleepless with the LOV gang and I was wondering if you could do a platonic LOV x teenage reader where she gets hurt in an attack from the heroes and what their reaction would be. If you’d like to add her quirk maybe something about controlling plant life? Thanks love”

Tags: @wwwwyamd​  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ 

Genre: Crack I guess

Word Count: 1,260

a/n: Ugghhh this took me a long time and I’m still not that happy with it...  I’ve been slowly losing steam, it’s probably bc of finals coming up and my grades and yeah...  Still!  I hope this crackity type thing makes you guys smile.  This is kiiind of a sequel to Sleepless? It happens in the same continuity/universe/timeline, think of it that way.

Also!  I have a few more requests and more originals from myself, but I have exams this week, so I possibly won’t be posting until after Wednesday, unless I decide to write that Bakugou hc request I just got to tide you guys over.

I didn’t use it very much, but gender neutral they/them pronouns here!

As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, all their eyes were on me.  Their silence is exactly what I expected, and I wanted nothing more than to disappear.  I try tilting my hat down so they can't see my face as I place the plastic bag on the table.  "Sorry I'm late, here's food. I'm gonna wash up-"

A hand comes down on my head and I gulp.

"What happened to your face?"

Dabi's voice lowering a whole octave and a half is the scariest thing in the world, change my mind.  "N-Nothing..."

"That's also not the jacket you left with earlier," Twice adds across from me.

Damnit, when did they get so perceptive?  I haven't been staying here for too long, I didn't think they would care about me other than when I go get their food and run other errands for them.

"(Y/n)," Kurogiri crosses his arms over his chest.  "Take the jacket and the hat off.  Now."

I can't refuse them when they're all piercing me with their murderous gazes like that.  They've been nice enough to keep me here, but they're still villains, I can't say they don't scare me in the slightest.  I'm deathly afraid of what might happen if they see what happened to me.  I slowly remove my jacket first, revealing a few scrapes and bruises on my arms.  When I'm met with silence, I remove my hat too, scrunching my eyes closed and preparing for the worst.

"What. Happened?"

I flinch at Dabi's harsh question, not having the courage to look up and look him in the eyes.

"Answer me, kid."

I pick at a scratch on my palms.  "I-I got caught up in an attack w-with the heroes.  I got a little-"

"A little what?!" Twice slams a hand down on the table and I jolt.  "Your face has a giant sore!  What hit you?!"

"Or who?" Dabi asks, hands clenched as his arms cross over his chest.

I back away, defensive about the whole situation.  "It wasn't on purpose.  They hit the ground and something went flying at my face-"

"You could've gotten hurt worse than that!" Dabi booms at me, stepping forward.  "Why didn't you block it in time?"

I feel myself getting smaller and smaller.  "I was running, and I heard someone screaming behind me, and I wasn't paying attention, that's all."

"Aw Dabi, you don't have to be so harsh," Toga wraps an arm around my quivering shoulders.  "You're being scary again, tone it down a notch."

"Yeah, stupid, you're going too OP on the yelling, no one wants to hear your mouth," Shigaraki pipes up, seemingly unbothered by the whole thing ad choosing to focus all his attention on his handheld console.

Dabi whirls onto him.  "What'd you say, Crusty?  How about you say it with your chest?"

Shigaraki stands up and gets in his face.  "I wonder what burnt chicken ashes tastes like-"

"Enough, you two!" Kurogiri booms out.  "There are more pressing matters than your pointless bickering."

"Yeah, our poor birdie (Y/n) got hurt," Toga rubs my face.  I wince when her finger brushes over the sore spot, but I don't want to push her away for fear she might do something to me.  "That's gonna leave a huge bruise for a few weeks."

"I'm gonna destroy whichever hero it was who caused it," Dabi returns back to me.  "Who was it?  Endeavor?  Best Jeanist?  One of those UA kids?"

"I don't know.  I didn't see them clearly," I squeak.  He's really gonna kill me now.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T SEE IT?"  Blue flames emerge from his palms.

"Hey, hey, take it down a few notches."  Twice wraps an arm around Dabi's shoulder and pats his arm.  "No need to act all tough."

"I'm sorry I got hurt, I'll be more careful next time."  The tears build up behind my eyes, but I try to hold them back.  I don't want to see what happens if I cry in front of them.

"Aw, look what you did," Twice exasperatedly motions to my bowed head.  "This is what happens when you're a tsundere hiding your feelings all the time."

"Come here, (Y/n)."  Kurogiri motions to the seat next to Shigaraki.  "Let me take care of your wounds."

"But," I blink back to clear my vision, "I deserved it, didn't I?"  Shouldn't I be in trouble now?

"Oh, shut up, stop being an emo," Toga pushes me toward the chair.

I end up seated at the bar, still constricting myself inward.  I'm not comfortable with anything going on, not to mention how perplexed I am.

Shigaraki spares a sideways glance at me before mashing at his buttons nonchalantly.  "That's one hell of a bruise, you're gonna look worse than me for a while."

I can't judge from his tone if he's insulting me, or trying to make a joke, or failing miserably at comforting me.

Kurogiri places a first aid kit on the counter.  "I'll do your face first."  He pulls out a few cotton swabs and a bottle solution.

Twice leans his arm on the counter on my other side.  "What's with that face, (Y/n)?  You look worried."

I pause for a moment before I look down at my feet.  "I'm waiting for you guys to do something to me."

The entire room freezes again and goes silent, sending me into another heart-racing mini panic.

Twice is the first to break the silence.  Even the soft hand he places on my shoulder makes me jumpy.  "I don't know how things were before you met us, or if that's the kind of impression we give," he shoots a look at Dabi, who just crosses his arms and looks away, "But that's not how we do things.  It was an honest mistake, how could you have known that would happen?  We're just concerned about if something bad happened to you."

I perk up at his words.  "You mean, I'm not just your lackey running your errands?  I'm not just an annoying kid you found on the street?"

"You make it sound like you're a stray cat or something," Shigaraki comments.  "Though, you are quiet and require a moderate amount of attention..."

"Of course you're not just a lackey, silly!  You're one of us!"  Toga's sweater pawed hands envelop my torso in a hug.  "Dabi's just being a meanie because he doesn't know how to show affection.  He should still apologize though."

"Yes, Dabi!" Twice adds with a flourish, "Apologize to my poor child!"  He grabs my head and forcefully pushes it into his hard chest.

Dabi sighs heavily, rubbing the back of his neck as the two stare at him expectantly.  "I shouldn't've yelled at you, kid.  I didn't know you'd be scared like that."

"It's fine."  It's weird being smothered by a group of housemates who might as well be strangers, but it blooms warmth into me somehow.

"Alright, you get first bite of the grub."  Twice eagerly opens up the bags of food and rips open one of the containers and disposable chopsticks to feed me.

Kurogiri gently blots at my face with his first aid supplies.  "Toga, stop wiggling, you're moving (Y/n)!"

Her grip around my waist doesn't loosen at all, her face snuggling into my back.  "Ey, Twice, it's no fair you get to feed (Y/n) first, I wanna do it!"

It's at this moment when I feel like Dabi and Shigaraki are the most normal ones out of all of them, until they start bickering over a container of noodles and start destroying things so Kurogiri needs to reprimand them again.  Even so, among all the prodding, squeezing, pulling, bickering, and smothering, I wonder if this is what family is supposed to feel like.

A secret smile only I can see quirks at my lips.  Nah, they're just weirdos.

[the-black-birb]

Thank You. [Oikawa Tooru x Reader]

Summary: In the midst of falling in love, somehow you break your own heart.

Pairing: Oikawa Tooru x Reader

Genre: angst

I wrote a sequel!! You can find it here!

A/N: This is a bit of a mess and a little bit personal, but I hope you like it nonetheless! sad Oikawa warning. Also, I listened to Ashe’s Moral of the Story while writing this, so maybe give it a listen while reading!

***enjoy!!**

When Oikawa and his girlfriend broke up, the whole world knew.

The gossip forums were gossiping. His fan club was torn apart. Some were ecstatic that their king was newly available. Others were distraught that he had his heart broke (and a select few thought him being taken was part of his appeal). The volleyball team expected a moody number one, with killer serves and impossible sets to boot. But practice continued surprisingly smoothly, only with a somewhat quiet captain.

But, to Oikawa’s dismay, the world kept spinning.

When you heard Oikawa broke up with her, you were truly surprised. They seemed happy, you thought. He smiled with her and looked just as breathless and model-like as he did before the two of you met. He held her hand and took photos with her and kissed her cheek, just like boyfriends were supposed to do. Oikawa Tooru, true to his reputation, was the perfect boyfriend.

Iwaizumi had stopped giving you updates on Oikawa when he started dating her. You didn’t mind. Clearly, he had moved on from you, and that was fine. If he was okay, you didn’t need to hear from him. But he wasn’t.

When you and Tooru stopped talking, no one except for Iwaizumi knew.

You weren’t sure what you had was enough to call a relationship. The two of you went to different schools, the ‘dates’ you went on were always far away from the public eye, and you never really had a label for the fire between the two of you. You and Tooru were never anything more than friends.

You and Tooru were friends, who had keys to each other’s house. You were friends that saw each other every Monday when he brought his nephew to volleyball practice, and you brought your little sister. You were friends, who accidentally kissed the first time he walked you home. You were friends, who called each other on restless nights to stare at the same sky.

Once, he stayed on call with you all night until you fell asleep. When you woke up the next morning, you could hear him snoring.

But, when Tooru was with you, he was all yours. None of his fans knew, nor his teammates. You didn’t tell your friends, worried about the outrage. Tooru was all yours, and you were all his.

Sometimes, you wondered if you gave away too much of yourself to him.

You gave Tooru milk bread and aliens. Last week, you saw a vintage poster for ET and you felt your heartbreaking beneath your ribs.

You gave him volleyball. When you passed boys on the court on the way home, you wanted to take their ball and throw it far, far away. They’d never look as at home in the court as he did, so what was the point?

You gave him the way you looked in the light of the stars, when nothing else mattered in the world but the two of you.

You wondered what Tooru gave to you. You wondered if he’d worn the sweatshirt of his you gave back the last time you spoke. Or if he’d kissed her the same way he kissed you. Slowly, at first, like he might break you, and then suddenly on fire. If he held her waist like he’d never see her again, or if he cried on her shoulder the first time he lost against Karasuno.

You wondered what little moments he couldn’t have again because of you.

Still, it was your choice to stop talking. You asked him if you could end whatever it was between the two of you.

School was hard as a third year. You were preparing for college, and to have a life. Tooru had been clear with you that volleyball was an undeniable part of his, and you were okay with that. If it was you or volleyball, he would choose volleyball. And you, with your own ambitions and aspirations, could understand that.

But you didn’t know how much it would hurt to be his. Or rather, not his. You were a secret to be kept. In order to be protected from his fangirls, and to make both of your lives easier, it was better for him not to say anything at all. You tried to understand that, too, and at first, you didn’t mind. You didn’t need everyone to know, just Tooru.

And then, you did. Because you doubted if he truly meant that. Or maybe he just didn’t want them to see you. Maybe you weren’t enough. You pushed away your doubts, desperately, knowing that Tooru was a good person.

But suddenly, every day was a chore. He was distraught over losing to Karasuno. You got it. He thought this would be the year he could make it to nationals. Three years of being a “powerhouse” school, but not once did they go to Tokyo. You got it.

You never told him you loved him. Back then, you weren’t sure if you did. In retrospect, there was no doubt in your mind. You loved him, and it was scary. You gave so much of yourself to him, and you were vulnerable and scared. He was relying on you every day to be okay and you wanted to be there for him so badly. But, what if he saw you couldn’t make him happy? What if he saw you were only good for comforting him, and no good for being in love with?

And, suddenly, you couldn’t handle it.

“Let’s stop this.” It was a Thursday afternoon and the sun was setting over the café the two of you would always meet at. Tooru was drinking earl gray tea with extra cream, just how he liked it. You had a black coffee and a chocolate cake. It was your turn to pay.

“Huh?”

He thought he misheard you.

“Let’s stop talking for a bit. College applications are rough. School is getting tough. I need to focus on me,” you explained. He stared at you plainly.

“Oh. I’m not sure what to say.”

“It’s okay,” you replied, looking into your mug. “I’ve got to get home early today to take care of my sis. Here’s your jacket, I washed it. I’ll see you around.”

You texted Iwaizumi immediately. Check in on him, you begged him. Make sure he is okay. Tell him he’ll find someone better. Find someone he’s not afraid to post online or tell everyone about.

For a few weeks, Iwaizumi did as you asked. He told you how Tooru was doing and you gave him tips on how to comfort him. Even though you weren’t talking to Tooru, you were still caring for him. A pit formed in your stomach, sure that this was the worst possible way to get over him. But, you assured yourself, he just needed space from you. You were enabling him to wallow for so long. You were the reason he wasn’t getting happier. You were guilty and in love and heartbroken and for goodness sake you just wanted him to be okay.

Then, you got a text from your friend at Seijoh.

You won’t BELIEVE who I’ve cuffed!!!!!

And then an image.

You had just dropped your little sister off at volleyball practice. You started getting their early because you knew Oikawa got their late.

That night, your mother picked her up in your stead.

Iwaizumi stopped texting you after that, but you didn’t need him to update you on Oikawa’s life anymore. Suddenly, he was everywhere.

Every date they went on, every kissed they shared, and every moment together was public. He looked happy, although his smile never really met his eyes.

He was probably just tired, you told yourself.

Your friend was ecstatic. She told you about him all the time. “Oikawa bought me flowers!” “Oikawa gave me his jacket!”

She wore it when the two of you went to get lunch one day. He never let you wear his team jacket because he needed it for competitions. You liked the alien sweatshirt better, though, because he’d had it before he even went to Seijoh and it smelled less like sweat and more like him.

She seemed happy enough with his track jacket, though.

“What should I get him for Valentine’s Day?” she asked you suddenly. You were caught off guard. You’d never had a Valentine’s Day with him.

“Well…” you trailed off. “I’m sure he’s getting a lot of chocolate from his fan club. Why don’t you get him something different that he likes…maybe tea?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Do you think he likes tea?”

You almost laughed. How does she not know he drinks tea?

“Maybe. I hear earl gray is good for relieving stress? He might be appreciative of that, with college exams and all,” you feigned ignorance. She seemed excited at your idea, however, and quickly dragged you to the store to pick out the perfect tea.

You helped her, of course. Not only because you knew the exact brand Oikawa kept at home for special occasions, but because she was your friend and you loved her and hoped she was happy. You hoped he was happy, too.

And then, they broke up.

It was as if the whole world had been set on fire.

She called you, in tears. He hadn’t given her a clear reason, really.

“I need to focus on me,” he told her, and you could hear his voice. “I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m just not happy with you.”

She asked you, sobs bubbling up in her voice, “Why wasn’t I enough? Why aren’t I enough?” But it wasn’t her voice you heard.

When she had finally calmed down and hung up to go finish her homework, you found it in you to go visit your café.

You weren’t really sure what you intended on doing. For memories sake, maybe. For the first time since you had met Oikawa, you were ready to let go of him. He was choosing to make himself better, and you were proud of him for that.

Before Oikawa was yours, the café had been yours, too. You went there with your friends and your younger sister. You went there when you found out you got into your dream high school, and when you had your first breakup long ago.

But then, the café was Tooru’s. You hadn’t been there since you broke up, afraid the heartbreak would be all too much again.

That day, you walked in as yourself again. You came home, all on your own.

“Hey.”

Of course, that didn’t mean you were alone.

Sitting at the far end of the café and looking out the window sat a familiar face. In front of him was an earl gray tea with extra cream, a black coffee, and a chocolate cake.

“I thought I might find you here.” He didn’t smile at you but pressed his lips into a straight line. The corners of his eyes dragged down. He didn’t look happy, but he looked honest.

Wordlessly, you sat in front of him.

“Thank you for the tea,” he told you. “I don’t want anything from you, I swear. You can pretend to not know me after this or to know me. Whatever you want. But could we talk, just for a little bit?”

You nodded, holding back the tears threatening to slip from your eyes.

“Of course, Tooru. We can always talk.”

[obsidianfr3sk]

the star of my sky

@renegadesnet event 8: friendship february

↪ [ Kasumi Hasegawa & Evander Wade / “If you'll be my star, I'll be your sky.”]

Summary: She could imagine her future, but she couldn't imagine herself not being friends with Evander. Kasumi would never be able to take her things and move to another place where he was not part of it. Because Kasumi would never voluntarily leave her home. And Evander had been her home since the first moment he walked through that door.

AO3

Hi, there!! This is my entry for the event 8 of @renegadesnet. I hope I’m not too late x’d in my time zone, it’s 9:06PM right now, so... I guess I’m fine. I feel like an irresponsible high schooler summiting her homework at 11:59pm... No, wait, that’s actually what I am.

Well x’d as you could see from the caption, this a fic focused on Evander and Kasumi’s friendship. I don’t even know why I’m so invested in this... made-up relationship (since they didn’t interact at all in canon) but I think it all began because when I started writing fics about the Council, I remembered Hugh and Simon weren’t the only members of it and that the rest of them needed to have, you know, personalities and relationships between them, details that MM seemed to forgot jaja. And these two just inmediatly made click with each other, at least in my head, and I’ve been dying to write something about them for a long time, but I think I never worked up the courage to actually do it until now:’) I’m even thinking about a small sequel but yeah

Despite what I said before (that for me the interest in these two started when I began to write my own fics) my dear mother Dawn ( @honey-hippie-harper) had a lot of very interesting headcanons about the whole dynamic the Council had during the Age of Anarchy, and two of those headcanons are that they all slept in the same bed they had at Simon’s basement and that when Adrian was born they decided that it would be better if some of them moved somewhere else, so it would be harder for people to discover their true indentities. Georgia and Adrian moved to an apartment Simon got for them, Simon and Hugh move to another one, and Tamaya got her own place, while Kasumi and Evander stayed at the Westwood house. So, for this fic, I decided to write based on those two specific headcanons. All credits to her!

Also this is gonna sound super weird but here I mention that Evander wears a cap x’d and that’s based on my other mother Wins ( @healing-winston-pratt) design of him, which you can find here! You know the drill, gente x’d go, like and reblog it!

Dawnie, Winston, this is a fic dedicaded to the two of you. Thank you for being such good mothers and friends to me✨

Since this an “unpopular” brotp I’m not quite sure who to tag, I really don’t want to bother anyone x’d but, @all-weather-is-bad and @ifyouhadntbutyoudid, I know you guys also love their dynamic so I think you may be interested on reading this! And if you also like my work, please like and reblog, it means the world to me <3

Also please forget any grammar/spelling mistakes, I feel phisically sick right now because I took a pill and it’s making me so freaking dizzy I think I’m gonna throw up or something x’d

I live to let you shine,

but you can skyrocket away from me,

and never come back if you find another galaxy,

far from here, with more room to fly.

Just leave me your stardust to remember you by.

The last days they spent living in the house were somewhat chaotic. Perhaps a part of it was due to the fact that now that Adrian was with them, they were all deprived of sleep. However, Kasumi was sure that it also had a lot to do with the fact that they had not realized how much of a mess the whole house actually was until the time to move out came and they couldn’t find their things.

Well, she wasn't moving out. But the rest of them were.

And that was something that Kasumi had been thinking about a lot since the moment that Georgie's pregnancy was made public, but that she had never dared to say it out loud because she was too afraid of the answer.

She didn’t have to say anything though. They gave her an answer as if she had asked them; her family loved to give their opinions even when nobody asked them to do it. 

It turns out that they could no longer live in Simon's house.

At least not the six— seven of them.

The city had gone crazy with Adrian’s birth (or Baby Indomitable, as they had affectionately named him), and while it was a good type of crazy, it also made them a little nervous that this new member of the family would put their secret identities at risk. Now, every time they came out in their civilian form, people were going to be looking everywhere for a woman who looked like Georgie, was holding a newborn baby and, as a bonus, was accompanied by some blond or brunette guy, a red-haired boy or a girl with dark hair.

Yes, they couldn’t take that risk.

“… But when you want to open that door,” Simon was telling her, “you have to push it with your shoulder, because if you don't—”

“It will not open,” Kasumi said.

“It's not going to open,” Simon agreed.

“She lives here too, Simon,” Tamaya said washing the glass in which she had been drinking water. “She knows how to open the door.”

All six of them were sitting at the dining room table. Georgie was nursing Adrian, while the rest ate a tasteless soup that they had made three days ago and that was surely going to spoil if they did not eat it that night.

“Yes, but there is anything wrong with remembering important points,” Simon noticed. “It is the first time that she will live alone.”

“She won't be alone,” Evander exclaimed suddenly. “She's going to be with me,” and he continued sipping the soup.

Hugh scowled at him. “Stop sipping your soup, Evander.”

But that only made him sip the soup harder. Hugh rolled his eyes and Georgie put Adrian on her shoulder to make him burp.

“I still can't find my cap,” Evander continued, touching his hair. “It seems to me like you have it in your box and wanna steal it.”

“Why would I want to steal your cap?”

“Maybe because you don't have one.”

At that moment, Adrian burped and Hugh's face lit up.

“That's what I think of your stupid cap,” he replied, pointing at Adrian.

Even Kasumi laughed at that joke. But Evander didn't find it funny.

“Good thing you're leaving now,” he said, clenching to the spoon with which he was eating his soup. “I don’t like any of you.”

“You don’t even like Kasumi?” Georgie asked, pretending to be surprised. Simon took Adrian in his arms so she could adjust her blouse properly.

Before Evander could answer, Hugh did it for him. “I heard him say in his sleep that he hated Kasumi the most.”

Evander tried to throw the spoon at him, but Tamaya grabbed his wrist and nearly ripped off his hand.

“Not in my watch, you fu—”

“Tamaya,” Georgie scolded her. “Remember what I told you.”

Tamaya looked at Adrian for a second and then focused her gaze on the ceiling. “Not in my watch, you ... f-u-c-k-i-n-g punk.”

“Are we spelling curse words now?” Simon asked.

“Jesus fu—“ Hugh stopped himself. “Wait ... f-u ... c ... k ...”

“Uh, someone can’t spell f-u-c-k-i-n-g,” Evander laughed out loud.

Georgie chimed in before Hugh threw his spoon at Evander. “At least when we're in Adrian's presence,” she said. “I don't want him to learn those words from you. Now that you are his aunts and uncles, you have to set a good example for him.”

Simon passed Adrian to Georgie again, and Kasumi stared at him, wondering if she was going to be able to set a good example for him and what things could she teach him to do. 

Perhaps she could teach him to swim. Or to dance. Although Kasumi did not know how to dance, and the truth was that she did not think she would be able to explain why she knew how to swim. No one had ever taught her to do it; she just knew it. She wasn't quite sure how swimming worked on people who didn't have water-related powers. (Tamaya had once told her that babies could be thrown into the water and their instinct to swim would come out on their own, but Kasumi would never throw a baby as pretty as Adrian into the water.) (She would never throw a baby into the water in general though, even if the baby was ugly.)

Or maybe she could teach him to play with dolls. Several Christmases ago, the others bought her an old rag doll with their savings, which she named Aiko. Kasumi took her everywhere, pretended to share her food with her during dinner, and tucked her every night in a shoebox that she had found and now used as the doll's cradle. The others realized how much she liked her gift, so for her ninth birthday, they gave her a beautiful doll with blonde hair and a pink princess dress, named Isabella. Kasumi didn't realize how much she was playing with the new doll, until one day she was having a tea party with Hugh and Simon (because that's the kind of thing Georgie told them to do, so Kasumi wouldn’t feel alone), and Hugh asked her, very into in his role of a rich lady from the Victorian era, why Duchess Aiko hadn't attended that afternoon. Then, Kasumi remembered that she hadn't gotten her out of her bed that morning and she began to cry.

Simon immediately went over to hug her and asked Hugh to hand the doll to him, but Kasumi was so embarrassed, she didn't even want to look at her in the eyes. When Hugh tried to give her the doll, Kasumi screamed as if she had seen a rat and not her favorite toy, which made Tamaya go downstairs to see what was happening, probably thinking Hugh and Simon were bullying Kasumi into insanity or something.

Now that she thought about it, it was kind of funny to remember the face Tamaya made when she saw Kasumi screaming, clinging to her two friends with all the strength she had, and without them taking off the fake pearl necklaces and hats they had put on for the occasion. It had probably been very funny to her too because as soon as saw the scene, she called Georgie and ran away from there, with one hand over her mouth and making strange noises.

Georgie played dolls with her more often from then on. When Kasumi overcame her fear of running out of love to give her toys (and made it known to her friends as if she had learned how to drive or graduated college), Georgie bought her a third doll, which had bunny ears, a white apron, and had Mimi embroidered on her hand. Now that they had three dolls, Tamaya was able to join them during their games, but Tamaya always came up with very morbid ones, such as that the dolls were a family of poor girls who had to play the guitar to earn some money or that they were housewives of wealthy gentlemen who mistreated them, so they planned to poison them during a business dinner to keep their money. These games scandalized Georgie, but Kasumi did like them and when they started to stop playing with her, she would sit her three dolls in a circle and stare at them, fantasizing about the outcomes of those stories they had left incomplete.

Those were the kinds of things that made Kasumi think that she had a good childhood. And that wasn't something many child prodigies could say.

If Adrian turned out to be a prodigy, she wanted to be a part of those kinds of stories so when Adrian grew up and remembered how his first years were, he would be able to say that they had been good and that Kasumi had the honor of being part of them, in the same way Kasumi could say that Georgie (his mother) had done the same for her. 

Simon had told her that the place Georgie and Adrian were moving to was not too far from the house, but Kasumi wasn't so sure. 

Everything would be easier if they all stayed together.

Although she supposed that having her family separated was better than having no family.

Right?

***

Not all prodigies were lucky enough to have a home.

Kasumi, for a long time, had been one of those prodigies. Her parents abandoned her when she was a baby, and she didn't think orphanages could be considered homes. Mainly because "home" wasn't the brick structure with four walls and a roof that protected you from the heat in the summer or the freezing winds in the winter.

A home was made by the people you lived with.

And they had proved it to her.

Georgie had told her a little bit about the days she lived on the streets after escaping from her father's house and told her that while she was wandering around town, she had seen a few children (who clearly were all prodigies) looking for food in the garbage or fighting each other over a piece of blanket to cover themselves from the sun. That she, at the time, had criticized them for behaving like savages, but that now, she could only feel sorry for them because it was probably the only thing they knew and it was their way of surviving, wondering if she had ended up like that too.

Kasumi… all of them had been very fortunate to have found a home in each other.

That was why it hurt so much to close the door behind her and realize that the house felt completely empty for the first time in all her life.

The first hours being in the house alone, Kasumi tried to distract herself by embroidering. She took out a pink sweater that she had wanted to embroider daisies on for a while now and she sat in the living room. She thought about whether it would be a good idea to turn on the television, but the only thing she could watch were very tacky cartoons some cheap animation studio made about the Renegades, and she didn't have the strength to be angry at the horrible (and even offensive) way they were drawn, especially the girls, Simon, and herself, so she just tried to blank her mind and focus on the task.

Georgie had taught them to embroider and Kasumi was obsessing over it. She had already embroidered their names on all the pieces of clothing they allowed her until Hugh had to put an end to it because they simply couldn’t be giving away personal information to strange people on the streets (“Yes, Kasumi, having our names embroider on our clothes is giving personal information to strangers, I’m sorry.”). Simon also no longer let her do that whole name thing, but he did let her embroider a tiny skeleton with an arrow going through his heart on the edge of his jeans. Tamaya was the one who had more difficulty learning how to do it, but over time she kind of got the hang of it, and Georgie spent much of her pregnancy adding details to the simple onesies she bought for Adrian.

Kasumi didn’t want to brag, but she was the one who had learned to embroider the fastest. She remembered taking Evander’s old clothes to practice and even embroidered golden stars on his white pajama pants. She wasn't quite sure if he was still wearing them, but she thought they look really well, especially when she (unintentionally) compared it to the other’s work.

However, Kasumi couldn't smile right now.

She may have learned to embroider faster than them.

But she was growing up slower than them.

She was not talking about her physical appearance or things like that. Despite eating a very poor diet, Kasumi had managed to grow ... what she had to grow. She was not abnormally short and, when she got up, she did not get dizzy, like Simon (who spent a week having panic attacks every morning, thinking they were signs of early anemia). Yes, Tamaya and Georgie already looked like grown-up women, but it was because they were grown-up women. Besides that, Georgie had told her all girls were different and beautiful in their way; the important thing was that Kasumi was healthy and that she felt comfortable in her own skin. Now, Kasumi did not feel super comfortable in her own skin, but perhaps it was because she was a teenager, and as someone who had lived with teenagers before, she knew they could be deeply insecure about their body.

(Kasumi practically grew up listening to Simon crying about his body hair, Georgie complaining about how greasy her skin got when she was about to have her period, Tamaya ranting about his wings and nose, and Hugh saying that he felt he was too big and grotesque to be a real human being. She did not understand why they thought such things. She considered that if Simon grew a beard in the future it would look very good on him, Georgie had a beautiful smile, Tamaya's features reminded her of those of a goddess, and... fine, she wasn't quite sure what exactly Hugh was complaining about, but it didn’t feel right to tell him how to live his insecurities and tried to be as assuring with him as she was with the rest of her family when she heard them make those comments about themselves.)

No, what Kasumi was referring to was that they all seemed to be growing in other areas of their life.

And she did not.

Georgie was a mom now. A single mom, who had her own apartment, in a beautiful area, near a park where she would surely spend hours fooling around with her baby. Hugh and Simon were officially a couple, and they had moved in together in a seedy, filthy, smelly apartment, but they talked about it like it was their dream house or something. Lastly, even though Tamaya wasn't living with anyone in particular, she thought that moving into her own place was a big step and that it could be good for her.

And again, maybe it was because of her age, but… But Kasumi didn't see herself doing any of those things.

She couldn't imagine having kids. She perhaps could imagine herself holding someone's hand and looking at each other with the same adoration that Hugh and Simon looked at each other, but that person still did not have a face in her imagination, which according to her family, “was the most vivid imagination it had ever existed”. Much less did she see herself capable of taking her things and simply moving to another place, as if it hadn't taken her years to find a place (find people) that she could call home.

Kasumi pricked herself with the needle.

She knew they weren't abandoning her. They would continue to see each other very often, at the Headquarters or during the missions. Tamaya had assured them she would visit them constantly to make sure the house was not on fire, and the others had said similar things, hinting that they would be doing the same thing.

The backyard door opened. “Kasumi!”

But even if she knew it, even if she was aware that all those feelings of abandonment were completely irrational, her anxieties were more powerful.

“Hey, Kasumi.”

What if they found another Kasumi? What if they found someone who loved them the same way she loved them? What if their interests changed over the years? What if, after meeting new people and having new experiences, Kasumi seemed more and more replaceable over time?

“Kasumi ...”

What if Kasumi was left so far behind that she ended up getting buried by all their new memories, forgotten behind the door of an empty room, which was as dark as a starless night sky?

“Zoomie!”

She pricked herself with the needle again and realized that Evander had been talking to her.

She put her finger to her mouth and raised her eyebrows. Evander wasn’t wearing his shoes, but the edges of his pants covered in mud, hinting that he had been playing outside. He was wearing his cap. Apparently, Hugh hadn't stolen it.

Kasumi wondered where he had left it and how he had found it.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” he announced. “Or… do you wanna take a shower first?”

Kasumi shook her head; she had already showered earlier that day.

“Well—” she looked at the sweater that Kasumi was embroidering. “What are you doing?”

She took a look at the sweater; the daisies were pretty nice. However, when she looked out the window, she realized that it was already dark outside and that her eyes were getting too tired. 

“I’m… I’m going to sleep,” she replied.

Evander nodded and she headed for the basement.

***

If she believed that being in the lonely living room had been a nightmare in which her most invasive thoughts had taken complete control of her, it was because she had no idea what kind of things awaited her in the basement.

The basement. That basement where they had all slept together for so many years, and that a few days ago had seemed too small for them, but now it looked huge. 

Never in her life had she had a bed to herself. At the orphanage, she shared a bed with other girls, and when she arrived at Simon's house, the five of them took turns to sleep in the twin-sized bed. Later, when Simon's parents left the house, instead of going to sleep in one of the upstairs rooms like normal people, they brought the double bed to the basement and put them together to create a larger bed.

There was something about sharing a bed with your family. A new kind of intimacy that Kasumi never thought she would ever experience.

Because she never thought that she would ever have a family in the first place.

She had to admit that it could be awkward at times. In the summer, the basement got very humid, and Kasumi, who slept between Georgia and Tamaya, felt like she was suffocating, and during winter, it was an eternal battle for the blankets. 

There were also times when Georgia and Tamaya would talk late into the night. Kasumi didn't participate in those conversations but she did pay a lot of attention to them, turning to see the one who was talking and then turning to see the other, as if her eyes were following the sound of their voices. Although they tried to keep their tone down, they couldn't contain their giggles. One time they were so loud that Simon told them to be quiet while calling them “scandalous chickens”. Tamaya went wild over that comment and only calmed down because Simon almost burst into tears as he begged her to forgive him and assured her that he wasn't trying to make fun of her.

And, a few years later, he arrived.

“Zoomie—”

This time he didn't have to call her twice for her to hear him. “I already got out of the shower.”

Suddenly, she could see Hugh and Tamaya sitting on the bed. She was lying on her stomach and he was leaning against a pile of pillows, loudly arguing about why putting ketchup on the pizza was a crime against humanity and that Hugh should see a psychiatrist for thinking "that fucking shit" tasted good. But when they listened to what Evander said, they suddenly interrupted their discussion, and said, “Thanks for telling us— ” “ —but literally no one asked, ” before starting to yell at each other again.

If she didn't feel like she was going to cry at any moment, she probably would have laughed a little. She always laughed at Hugh and Tamaya's jokes.

“I mean… in case you wanna take a shower now.”

Simon was there too. He was pulling his pajamas and a pair of socks (that used to be white but had turned pink after finishing in the wrong batch of clothes) out of the drawers, and said, looking disapprovingly at the others, “Well, I did ask him because I do want to take a shower.”

He and Kasumi had that in common: they like to shower every day, and if they didn’t, their anxiety kicked in. 

“Or if… you know, you want to brush your teeth. I already brushed mine.”

Then Georgie walked over to them, gently took Evander by the cheeks, and said, “Let me see; blow” in the same tone she used to order him to show her the empty plate after making a dish that had lots of vegetables on it, or when she asked him to close his eyes each time they came across a particularly violent scene while they were strolling through town in their civilian clothes.

She never needed to ask her to do that. Kasumi didn’t lie about brushing her teeth, she ate all her vegetables and she did close her eyes when she saw people (not villains or heroes; people) fighting in the middle of the street without anyone having to remind her. 

In a blink, they all disappeared.

But Kasumi was still there.

And Evander too.

“I WANT THIS ONE!” he squealed before getting into the larger bed. He took one of the pillows and began rubbing his head against it. “Finally ... a bed all to myself.”

At least one of them was happy about it.

***

When Kasumi came back from brushing her teeth, put on her pajamas, and braided her hair so it wouldn’t get all tangled during the night, Evander was staring at the ceiling, completely still. He did not greet Kasumi when she entered, nor did he say anything to her when she sat on the twin-sized bed.

The beds were still together, but Kasumi felt like they had already separated them. 

Then, she remembered that they had left the blankets drying in the backyard. Terrible decision. They were going to freeze to death. 

She sighed and fumbled for something to cover herself while she went outside to get them when Evander stood up on the bed and spread with all his might a heavy (and filthy) red blanket they weren’t able to fit inside the washing machine and was left there on the floor like it was nothing. 

Kasumi felt the blanket as the warmest of hugs. It covered most of the twin-sized bed and half of the other.

“If you steal the blanket,” Evander said lying down again, “I'm going to put my cold feet on you.”

She lay down too.

She did see him capable of doing that.

Evander was capable of a lot of things.

***

When Evander arrived, one of the first things she did was ask Georgie where he was going to sleep.

Oh, because Kasumi knew they were going to keep him. They just had to. 

Georgie told her that he would sleep with the rest of them, and that was completely fine to her. At least until problems started to appear. 

To begin with, he didn't fit in the boy's bed; he and Simon would do it perfectly, but Hugh was too big and took up much of the mattress.

“You are a monstrosity of a human being,” Evander blurted out. “No offense.”

“I'd take it as a compliment,” Hugh assured.

In the double bed, they were going through a similar situation. The three of them fit, but barely, not to mention that Tamaya had to sleep in very specific a position so she wouldn’t hurt her wings. Georgie assured that she would not let anyone sleep on the floor.

So Evander ended up sleeping in the space between the two beds, one part of his body over one mattress and one part on the other.

Kasumi wondered if he had difficulties adjusting to this new lifestyle. Although he hardly spoke about what his life had been like before joining the Renegades (as he had named them), she had heard Georgie tell Tamaya about how much he kicked her during the night or that Hugh confessing to Simon that it saddened him to hear him cry for his mom during the night (“Don’t tell him I said that though.”)

Maybe it was that Evander was not used to sharing a bed with other people, and he was even less used to those people taking years to react when the two beds accidentally separated, making him fell and hit his head.

‘Cause that happened.

“Georgie… the kid fell.”

“Hey, you asshole, stop cuddling with your— friend and help him.”

“We’re preparing him for the blows life is going to throw at him.”

“Simon, darling, I'd expect that kind of comment from Hugh, but from you—”

“I think I’m bleeding…”

That was enough to make Kasumi react. She got off the bed (kicking Georgie and Tamaya in the process), helped him get up, and, after making sure he was not bleeding, dusted off his clothes and hair.

“Are you okay, Vandy?” she asked him.

Evander looked at her with teary eyes and told her he was fine. Hugh put the beds back together (after Tamaya threw a shoe at him to make him react) and Georgie cuddled with her (probably to prevent her from throwing more shoes), so he and Kasumi slept next to each other the rest of the night.

She did not quite understand what Georgie and Hugh were talking about in those conversations that she overheard them having with Tamaya and Simon. Evander didn't kick her and she didn't hear him cry.

The next night, a few hours before making their first public appearance as the Renegades, Kasumi was in the living room, playing with her dolls (or staring at them while imagining the scenarios) when Evander appeared.

“How old are you?” he asked her.

“Excuse me?”

“How old are you?” he repeated.

For some reason, Kasumi had a little trouble remembering how old she was. “I'm thirteen,” she finally answered.

Evander nodded and sat on the floor, between two of her dolls, without Kasumi inviting him. She didn't quite know how to feel about it.

“Georgie is nineteen,” she kept saying. “And Tamaya eighteen, and—”

“And Simon and Hugh are sixteen,” Evander finished. “Yes, I know. I've asked them.”

Kasumi looked down. Thanks for telling us, but literally no one asked. 

“I’m nine years old—” and he showed her nine of his fingers.

She wanted to tell him she thought he was a lot younger, but… yes, no one had asked. So she kept quiet.

The next thing Evander asked was:

“Do you like to play with dolls?”

So Kasumi smiled, and answered him:

“I love playing with dolls.”

“I never play with dolls,” Evander told her wrinkling his nose. “It’s for… girls.”

“Georgie says that all games are for girls, boys, and anyone who falls in between those,” Kasumi quoted solemnly. “Hugh and Simon played dolls with me all the time.”

Now it was Evander who looked away. “I don't think Hugh and Simon want to play with me,” he muttered.

“Why?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “It seems to me that… older kids have other things they worry about. Also, they’ve been friends since before I arrived.”

Kasumi thought that the word "friends" was not the most appropriate word to describe their relationship. Or that was what she had heard Tamaya say that afternoon, and when she was thirteen, all her opinions were opinions that other people had before, like the one about “All games are for girls, boys, and anyone who falls between those” that Georgie told her.

Speaking of them…

“Tamaya and Georgie don't want to play with me anymore,” she confessed quietly.

“Were they friends before you arrived?”

Kasumi shook her head and played with the loose thread on her skirt. “No, but I guess… people grow up. People grow up and that's it.”

Who knows if Evander understood what she meant by that. Kasumi herself didn't know what she had meant.

But Evander asked another question again.

“Can I play dolls with you, Kasumi?”

And Kasumi smiled.

Again.

“I'd loved if you played dolls with me, Evander.”

“You can call me Vandy.”

Kasumi smiled even more. “Seriously?”

“Yes, I really liked it when you called me that yesterday,” he replied. “Actually, I hadn't spoken to you all day because I was looking for an equally cool nickname to give you.”

She supposed that if he was already talking to her, that meant he had found a nickname. “And which one is it?”

Evander smiled at him too. “Zoomie.”

Zoomie was the best nickname anyone could have come up with.

It turned out that Evander was even better at imitating Victorian lady voices than Hugh and Simon. He was also not scandalized by the dramatic stories she invented, and even came up with the plot’s darkest moments. They had to be dragged to bed, and Georgie made the serious mistake of letting them sleep together again; they talked for hours until Simon asked them to be quiet with a not very family-friendly vocabulary. He even used the F-word (the same one that Hugh apparently couldn't spell). It was kind of shocking, but they let it go because it was Simon, and Simon would have done the same if it had been the other way around.

The third night they slept together, Tamaya snapped and threw her other shoe at them. In her opinion, the situation had become insufferable and others supported her. Georgie sat them at the dining room the next morning and told them that although she was very glad they were friends, she will have to go back to sleep between them because they were messing with everyone’s sleep schedule. 

It was the first time that someone addressed them as "friends." Kasumi was so happy about it that she didn’t even complain about Georgie’s decision. 

She had never had a friend just for herself.

But even after this new adjustment, Evander kept being… a mess. He kept talking before going to sleep, just that this time, his partner in crime was Hugh. At first, Kasumi thought Hugh was going to ignore him, but he genuinely seemed interested in the comic books Evander talked him about and even began reading some of them. Tamaya threw at them all the shoes they had, but not even with that she managed to shut them up, and they had to took away all the objects that could be thrown that were on her side of the bed so that she did not end up seriously hurting someone. Simon once remarked that he almost fell out of bed because Evander just moved too much, and when they hinted that he was just angry that Hugh no longer cuddled with him while he slept because he was too busy talking with Evander, he ignored them the rest of the day. Georgie kept waking up feeling her body all soar (“Evander kicks like a soccer player, I swear”), but she still was the first to comfort him when nightmares haunted him in the middle of the night.

She had never seen him like that though.

Not until now.

Kasumi felt the bed so empty that she couldn't fall asleep. Her eyes were closed, but her mind was racing, thinking about all the scenarios in which all had gone wrong and now her family (Adrian included) was being taken to the cathedral to be publicly executed by Ace Anarchy himself. She felt the other bed's mattress and the blanket moving at the same time that Evander did, while he babbled things that Kasumi couldn't understand.

At least until she felt a warm pair of her hands grip her wrists so tightly that it made her open her eyes violently and scream.

Her first instinct was to think those hands belonged to some anarchist, ready to pull her out of bed and drag her into the depths of limbo, but it didn't take her long to recognize them.

They were the same hands that played dolls with her when she was younger, that gently pulled her ponytail when she zoned out in the middle of interviews and wanted to make her react, and they were the same hands that took hers and rubbed them during cold days because he knew Kasumi didn’t like wearing gloves but her hands were still so cold that he feared they would get all frozen and fall. 

Evander was so close to her, that even in the dark, she could see that he was frowning and clenching his jaw while moving his legs as if he was trying to get away from something.

“Stop… stop, stop… stop,” he pleaded with someone who wasn't really there.

But Kasumi was there.

“Evander, Evander, it's me,” she whispered. “Evander, it's me.”

Evander kept kicking, kept running, and kept pleading.

“Stop, stop…”

“It's me, Evander,” she insisted. “Evander…”

Then, she remembered what the keyword was.

“It's me, Vandy—” she put a hand in his hair “—It's me…”

Evander progressively released her wrists, and as he did so, he opened his eyes, filled with tears and fear.

Kasumi felt her lips tremble, and she…

Understood. She understood those conversations she heard them had.  

But what she did not understand was how they did not break with him to see him like that. All trembling, teary, and…

Small. 

Really, really small. 

She really didn’t.

However, a part of her must have understood because although Kasumi felt a bump in her throat, she did not shed a single tear. Not even when he, with a voice more broken than she had ever heard came out of him, whispered:

“Zoomie?”

She didn't stop stroking his hair. “I heard you talking in your sleep.”

“Zoomie—“ he put a hand on her cheek “—Zoomie, I had a bad dream.”

She was not surprised.

Kasumi put her free hand over his. “Do you wanna tell me about it?”

She had always been told that sharing dreams, especially unpleasant ones, could help. Kasumi was very lucky that most of her dreams were pretty ones, like days at the beach, swimming with dolphins, or romantic boat rides because she dreamed pretty often. Simon also dreamed a lot, but they were more nightmares than anything else, like when he dreamed that a couple dressed in black came to the house and wanted to take him out of the city, speaking in a language he did not understand and calling him “Simón” instead of “Simon”. The others did not dream as often as they did, but Georgie once dreamed that she crashed into a plane while flying and the plane exploded with a lot of people inside, Tamaya that some goats chewed the feathers of his wings, and there was a time when Hugh claimed to have constant nightmares about everyone in the house dying of a mysterious illness and school recitals (“... and I've never even been to a school recital!”)

She knew all that because many times they had come to her and to tell her, “Kasumi, I just had a horrible nightmare and I hope you can give me tell what it means.”

Maybe if Evander told her what his dream was about, she could help him.

However, Evander told her that he didn't feel like talking about it.

Kasumi got it. After all, it was the first time she woke him up from a nightmare. 

Nightmares could be very private.

“It's okay ... will you ... will you let me rub your back, then?” she asked him. 

He nodded very slowly and Kasumi moved closer to him, to the point that they both were practically over the space between the two beds. She had half of her body on one mattress, and him in the other.

Kasumi had war flashbacks, and Evander too.

“This are the blows Simon told me life will throw at me,” he stammered with a sniffle.

Kasumi gave a soft laugh and started rubbing his back. She discreetly smelt his hair. “Your hair is really soft after you wash it.”

“Thank you.”

“You should probably do it more often...”

Evander didn't respond.

He just burst into tears.

“You aren't gonna leave me, are you?” he asked her.

“What?”

Evander tried to wipe the tears away with the blanket, but that only made him cry even louder and his sentences get more incomprehensible. 

“Like— you ...” he sobbed, “you aren't gonna leave me like the rest of them, right?”

Immediately, Kasumi knew who he was referring to and her heart shrunk as her brain was able to process what he had said.

“They didn’t leave us,” she replied, brushing his hair behind his ears, “they just—”

“Grew up.”

Kasumi got chills. His tone had felt so cold and distant for a moment. “Yeah. That’s kind of how life is.”

Instinctively, the two of them pressed their foreheads against each other, and Kasumi noticed that Evander was sweating, but she was not disgusted by any means.

She was just deeply concerned about him.

“You're getting older,” Evander whispered. “You're probably not gonna like me in a couple of years.”

She already had the answer for that on the tip of her tongue. But she remembered all her insecurities and she stopped being so sure if she would be telling the truth if she were to answer him at that moment. 

And she would never lie to him on purpose.

So although Kasumi did not like to imagine how her life would be in the future, she tried to do so, only to confirm her idea.

She imagined herself as an adult. A little more confident, powerful, and, God willing, a little taller. She envisioned a future in which none of her family members would forget her and she could become part of Adrian's childhood memories. She would help Georgie to take care of him so that she could spend time by herself because only God knew how much that woman needed time for herself. Tamaya would introduce them to the young man she had talked about so much lately, the doctor who helped her heal when her wing got hurt and he would be as nice as she had promised. She was even able to see herself being a bridesmaid at Hugh and Simon's wedding when they finally made her relationship public and reminded the whole world that it was still possible to love in a city that seemed so full of hate.

She could imagine her future, but she couldn't imagine herself not being friends with Evander.

Kasumi would never be able to take her things and move to another place where he was not part of it. Because Kasumi would never voluntarily leave her home.

And Evander had been her home since the first moment he walked through that door.

“Don’t be silly. I'll always like you,” she assured him, stroking his hair again. “And most importantly... I will always be here for you.” And unintentionally, she added, “Even when you grow up, and you do not like me anymore.”

Evander pulled away slightly from her and stared into her eyes for a long time. She thought maybe that's how she looked when she was imagining something too.

Only... with a less puffy face. 

“I'm always gonna be there for you too,” he replied. “And I’ll always like you, and I’ll always love you. You know that, right?”

Kasumi didn't know how to answer.

She… she didn’t.

Like— she knew he liked her, but she didn’t think he loved her.

It was a nice thing to hear.

“No,” she mumbled, brushing off the tears that rolled down his face with her thumb. “But ... thank you.”

Then, Evander was able to regain his composure and rubbed his hands all over his face tightly as if he was trying to wipe the tears out of his eyes. Kasumi took that opportunity to change her position and allow him to put his head on her chest.

“When I'm rich and famous, I'll buy you a house,” Evander told her, trying to hide the nasal voice that had remained after crying as hard as he just did. “It will be near my mansion.”

Kasumi pinched his cheek. “So you get a mansion and I get a house. How nice of you.”

“I know” he replied with a proud smile.

The audacity.

But that was not the time.

She took the tip of the blanket. It almost fell from the bed during the attack.  

“Come on ...” she whispered, covering him up to his chin. “Go back to sleep.”

“Are you going back to sleep too?”

“Yes,” she lied to him.

But as Evander immediately knew he was lying, it didn't count as a lie at all.

“Liar,” he laughed. “Don’t be silly. I wanna stay up with you too.”

Kasumi didn't find a reason why she wouldn't let him.

After all, there was no one to throw shoes at them or to shut them up unkindly anymore. There wasn't even someone who would leave them on the floor if they fell out of bed or who would come between them anymore because they all thought putting them together was going to cause the apocalypse or something.

It hurt a little bit to think about that, but at the same time, it hurt less than before.

“Did I tell you I found my cap?”

Kasumi remembered the entire cap fight. “No, but I noticed.”

“Do you wanna know where it was, Zoomie?”

“Where was your cap, Vandy?”

Evander not only told her about how he had found his cap; he also talked to her about her whole day in detail and made jokes that made Kasumi laugh out loud and her eyes itch. 

She didn’t know if it was because she had been holding back her tears for so long, or if it was because it was during the night when one could see the stars, and Evander was pure light in those very moments.

The next morning, when they saw the others again at the Headquarters, Kasumi no longer felt abandoned, or as she was going to fuse with the darkness of that empty room where they supposedly left her because there was no room to begin with. But even if that did happen, and she ended up becoming one with the night sky, she knew that she was going to at least have one star to shine on her and assure her that neither of them would ever truly be alone if they had each other.  

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

No Matter Where You Go, No Matter What Happens - fic

Characters: Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson Summary: Damian had given up on the family, given up on the Bats. But there was one who he thought he’d lost, who’d never give up on him. A/N: Apparently my new thing is to ignore all the ideas I’ve been building in my head or long fics I’ve started to write garbage in two hours and post it. Cool. Could be seen as kind of? a sequel to Missing The Obvious, but also not really. But the same idea of that fic/what happened in that one is what I carry into this one, if that makes sense. But you don’t have to read that one! Just have to kind of know about Damian’s current turmoil in canon. I dunno. more trash from me woo-hoo~

~~

It was without warning, that his phone started blowing up.

It was Tim. Jason. Cassandra. Stephanie. Even a few from Barbara Gordon. And that proved its seriousness – Barbara never texted him, even in emergencies.

But he didn’t read them. Didn’t care to. He’d separated himself from the family months ago. Took his own path, one unobstructed by his father or mother. One entirely his own. He knew he didn’t have their blessing, not from anyone he considered family, but he also didn’t ask for it. Didn’t want it.

No one had contacted him since he left, which was good. Even when it stung, when he thought he might miss them, it was good, because that meant for once in his life – they listened to him.

But now, all of the sudden, it was like his attention was all they wanted. He scoffed as his phone buzzed again, and he whooshed the notification away without even glancing at its content.

Too little too late.

It’d been a week of this. A week of buzzing, of ringtones, of voicemails and texts. But it was fine, he’d already trained his brain to ignore it as white noise.

He almost laughed the day it became more than that. When he was sitting on the balcony, completing some research, when he heard his phone come to life inside the apartment. When he heard it start speaking.

“I…” It crackled. Damian smirked. About time they thought about remotely accessing the device. “I think I got it, Jay…”

Tim, of course. But still, Damian didn’t rush to answer it. Barely even turned his head towards the sound.

“Damian, if you can hear me, please just listen.” Tim begged. There was static on the line. “…bered, okay? He remembered and he wants to find you. Talk…you. We told him about your…gone the next morning. So, just…just so you know?”

“And don’t fucking attack him either, got it?” Jason chimed in angrily. “We told him your request…never fucking listened in the first place.”

“…mian, if you’re there, plea…ust let us know you got this, okay?” Tim continued, like Jason hadn’t interrupted. “That’s all we’re ask…you’re doing well, kid.”

The static took over his voice for a second, and then the phone went silent once more. Damian just snorted and went back to his research.

~~

The attempts to contact him stopped immediately after the message, and Damian didn’t care enough to remember anything Tim’s half-delivered message entailed. Whatever it was, he could handle it, surely.

So he wasn’t thinking about it, when he went into town a few days later and mulled around a farmers’ market. Didn’t think about it when he bought a bushel of fresh apples, and went to the nearby park to snack while he sketched the simple scene in front of him.

Didn’t think about it because for once, he was at peace. Calm. Settled.

But he should have known better. Because peace never lasts very long.

Somewhere nearby, in his periphery, he saw someone stop in the middle of the crowd, and stand there longer than normal. Frozen, clearly not looking at one of the nearby stalls. Damian took note of the person’s presence, but otherwise did nothing. Unless they attacked someone or pulled out a weapon, a person being strange was no reason to be alarmed.

“…Damian?”

Oh, well maybe that was.

He tightened the grip on his pencil as he looked up, but almost dropped the utensil instantly. Because the person who had stopped in the crowd, the person acting strangely, was none other than Dick Grayson.

“He remembered and he wants to find you.”

…Oh.

“Damian?” He asked again, taking a step forward. Damian just stared at him dumbly. Because with one word, with just one name, Damian knew it wasn’t Ric. It wasn’t the cabbie his older brother had become in the amnesia. With just the sound of his name he knew it was his brother. It was the Richard Grayson he knew and adored.

“…Grayson?” Damian whispered back. A grin instantly broke out on Dick’s face, but there was instantly something wrong with it, like it was being weighed down. Like it wasn’t allowed to exist.

“I found you.” Dick breathed, and instantly his eyes began to well up with tears. “I…I found you. I was starting to think I wouldn’t, was just thinking I should go home, but I didn’t…I didn’t want to give up on you. I didn’t…”

Suddenly, Dick inhaled a shaky breath and began wiping at his eyes with his fists, like a child might.

Damian’s eyes widened when he saw the first tear drop onto Dick’s collar. “Grayson…?”

“I…I remembered and I came home.” He sobbed. “But…but you weren’t there, and no one would tell me where you’d gone. It took…it took them a fucking week to tell me you’d left, and why, and what happened and I just…”

Dick curled in on himself, and without warning, dropped to his knees, right in the middle of the farmers’ market. Damian instantly jumped up, letting his sketchbook and pencils fall to the ground, and ran to his brother’s side. His own knees had barely touched the ground when Dick lashed out, dragging Damian into his arms, and hiding his wet face against his neck.

People were starting to stare. Damian ignored them.

“I’m sorry.” He murmured. “If I’d have been there, I’d have never let Bruce treat you that way. Or the Titans. Or the family.” He squeezed Damian’s shoulders. “I’d have stayed with you, or…or you could have stayed with me. We could have figured this out together. I’d have helped you. I’d have listened. I wouldn’t have let you be alone.”

Despite his shock at the moment, at the complete breakdown, at the situation, Damian felt himself smile. “I know, Grayson. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

But Dick was shaking his head. “When I remembered everything, I remembered you first. And I came straight to Gotham because I knew…” A pause, to blubber a little. “Because I thought you’d be there.” A watery exhale. “I just wanted to see you so bad, Damian. After…after everything, I just wanted to see you.”

Damian closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around Dick’s back. “Well. I’m here now. I hope that’s alright.”

Dick tried to laugh, but it came out wrong.

“And I won’t…I’m not here to force you back to Gotham. I won’t do that to you.” Another squeeze, and Damian almost had to grunt in pain. “I just wanted…I just needed to see you. After everything.”

Damian merely rubbed at his brother’s back. “…Thank you, Grayson.” He hummed. “Thank you for coming after me.”

“As if I ever wouldn’t.” Dick promised, voice almost angry. “And trust me, I gave Bruce a piece of my mind for not doing the same. For pushing you away in the first place.”

Reluctantly, Damian pushed Dick back, holding his arms as he stared up at his red, tear-stained face. “You look ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well.” Dick pouted, sniffing and running his sleeve across his eyes. “You go spend two weeks looking for your brother, afraid the whole time that you’re never going to find him or see him again.”

“I should not be on that high of a pedestal in your life, Grayson.” Damian laughed.

“God, kid, I’d hope you’d believe me by now.” Dick scolded, cupping Damian’s face in his hands. “You mean the whole damn world to me. Always have and always will. No matter what the rest of our family and friends do or say. Bruce included.” A thoughtful pause. “Bruce especially.”

Damian felt his face heat up, the sentiment almost too much to bear. He’d…forgotten, what it was like to be cared about. Quite frankly, the lack of Grayson reminding him so every second of every day is how he ended up on this shattered, lonely path in the first place.  “…How long will you be in town?”

“For however long you’ll have me.” Dick swore, wiping at his eyes one last time. “I haven’t seen you in almost two years, Damian. A few days might not be long enough.”

“Stay as long as you want, then. Forever is fine.” Damian grinned. “We’ll have to get more food from the market, though.”

“Whatever you want to do, I’m with you every step of the way. Honestly, you’re stuck with me, for now.” He gently stroked his thumbs across Damian’s cheeks. “…I love you, kiddo.”

“I love you too, Grayson.” Damian said confidently. He pulled out of Dick’s hands and stood, offering a hand to Dick to help him up. Dick took it, stood, and immediately enveloped Damian back in his arms, pressing a long kiss to Damian’s forehead.

“I missed you so much.” Dick whispered into his hair. “So, so, so much.”

Damian leaned up into the embrace. “I missed you too, Grayson.” Then childishly: “Please don’t leave me again, even if it’s just through amnesia.”

“I’ll do everything in my power.” Dick promised. He held Damian for a moment, and they let the sounds of the market wash over them. Finally, hesitantly, Dick let go, stepping over to pick up Damian’s abandoned art supplies and remaining apples. “So. Where to first?”

“Back to the fruit stand.” Damian smirked. “I’m sure you didn’t eat much in the way of healthy foods in your life as a Bludhaven cabbie.”

Dick grinned at the barb. “Brat.” He laughed, wrapping his arm around Damian’s shoulders as they disappeared back into the crowd.

[theangriestpea]

The Killing Type | Five

Summary: Just when Lavender thought things were going great with Sweet Pea, a new girl comes back to turn to turn their entire relationship upside down. Now they have to navigate a world of drug dealers, rival gangs, and co-parenting. Sequel to Mercy Killing. (links now at the end of chapter)

Rating: Mature // Explicit

Pairings: Sweet Pea x OC // eventual Jughead Jones x OC

Warnings: Smut, restraints, cunnilingus, minor dirty talk, drug mentions, blackmail??

Word Count: 4.8k+

A/N: This shouldn't have taken me two weeks to write but it did. Between work and a bad bought of depression I just don't have much energy to do anything that's not mindless. But regardless I'm super happy with how this chapter came out. It was brought to my attention that links sometimes cause posts to not show up in the tags! Links will be at the bottom of chapters from now on to see if that solves the issue.

Chapter Five : The L Word

Lavender was rubbing her cheeks furiously in an attempt to dry them. She could hear Sweet Pea following her, but simply pretended that he didn’t exist for the moment. She didn’t want to be near him right now, not after everything that had happened since last night.

As soon as she got inside her trailer, she planned on calling Toni and asking if she could spend the night at Thistlehouse. Maybe some girl time would help her clear her head and mend her heart. Also being sandwiched between Toni and Cheryl meant that the likelihood of her having any nightmares was slim. She didn’t want to sleep with Sweet Pea or Fangs this time around, not since they both had spurned her.

She trudged up her front steps and quickly unlocked the door. Once inside, she attempted to slam the door shut but a large hand stopped it from closing. More anger and hurt welled inside of her. Why couldn’t he just give her some fucking space ?

“Sweet Pea, just leave me alo-” She began before he abruptly cut her off.

“I love you.” He said plainly, as if it were nothing. As if it were something he had said a million times before. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest, wrenching itself against her ribcage as it pounded with anxiety. Did he really just…?

She didn’t want to face him, not now. Not after what he had just said. He waited for her to verbally respond, however Lavender’s mouth and throat felt like they were so stuffed with cotton that she couldn’t say anything. Even her tongue felt like sandpaper, pressed against the hard palate of her mouth to keep herself from audibly sobbing again. Why after all this time did he say it? Why did he always pick the absolute worst moment to talk about his feelings? She wanted to scream.

If she had turned to look at him, she would have seen the scared and pained look on his face. The feeling of rejection creeping up his spine as he yearned for her to say something, anything to confirm that she felt the same way. That they meant more to one another than they had ever let on. That this went beyond acquaintanceship, beyond friendship, and beyond sex. There was more to it than that or so he thought…

“Shanna?” His voice cracked, making him flinch at how whiny it sounded. He dreaded for anyone to see or hear him like this. Already he was feeling tortured by showing so much soft emotion, even if it was to his girlfriend. If she had said something back then it wouldn’t be so bad, but her silence was more telling than not.

Lav finally turned to look up at him, her eyes watery again with more tears. She nodded her head and he finally realized she was unable to speak, whether it was due to the vitriol of emotion she was feeling or something else, he wasn’t entirely sure.

Finally after a few tense minutes, she found the ability to speak. “Do you mean that?” She probed, not quite trusting his utterance. Though Sweet Pea was honestly not one to lie about feelings, it was just so new to her to hear this from him. He had mentioned before how he had loved Lily, but he had never used such a word with her in regards to their relationship. It was a dream come true and for that she couldn’t trust the reality of it.

He stared at her, wondering if he could pull up the nerve to say it again. When he found that he couldn’t, he nodded his head numbly with his eyes never leaving hers to let her know that he was being sincere. Lav rubbed her eyes once more, smearing salty tears across her face for the dozenth time.

Should she say it back? She wondered, still finding it hard to even speak. Such a strange cacophony of emotions bundled up inside of her chest. “I…” She muttered, tripping over her own words, “I l-love…” She inhaled sharply, trying to power through it. “I love you too.”

They looked at one another wordlessly, Sweet Pea’s jaw set firmly as he clenched his teeth. All he wanted to do was sweep her up and kiss her, but he wasn’t sure if she would be up for that or not. He didn’t know how triggered she may have been by the Ghoulie from before. But Christ, he just needed to touch her.

Sweet Pea took two broad steps forward and grabbed her by the upper arm to pull her into his chest. Lavender didn’t even bother trying to resist him. She melted into his torso, taking a deep breath to inhale his intoxicating scent. Despite being upset with him, all she wanted to do now was just stay wrapped within his arms, enveloped in the illusion of safety.

She felt his nose nuzzle into the hair on the top of her head, the slow intake of air through his nostrils to take in the smell of her shampoo. He never felt more at home then he did when she was in his arms.

Lavender hadn’t realized how touch starved she was until this very moment. And she knew straight away that it would be difficult for her to let go of him any time soon. Not only that but she wanted more and while she knew he couldn’t resist her, she also wasn’t sure if she should give in to her own desires. He had been a raging asshole after all.

She heard him mumble something into her hair, but was unable to decipher it. “I can’t understand you,” She said, turning her head from out of his jacket so he could hear her.

He let out a small groan before lifting his face off of her scalp. “I said, I’m sorry for what I said at the Wyrm.” She didn’t have to see him to know that his face and neck were flushed red with embarrassment. He always seemed to have an allergic reaction to apologizing. Still, it was amazing that he even said he was sorry as usually he just acted like nothing had ever happened. Maybe he was starting to grow up, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

Her grip around his waist tightened a fraction, pressing her cheek into his sternum in an attempt to keep herself from crying again. The hurt was still so fresh in her mind that despite what she felt was a sincere apology, she still couldn’t help but think of his stinging words. Sweet Pea began to rub her back, sensing that she was on the verge of spilling more tears.

“You’re such an asshole to me.” She huffed out, managing to stop herself from crying. “I don’t understand how you can say you love me after acting like a total jerk.” She attempted to pull away, however Sweet Pea did not allow her to. His grip around her remained vice.

She felt him stiffen uncomfortably against her. “I don’t know how to do this.” He said quietly, almost so low that she didn’t even hear him. “I’ve never felt like this before, okay? I don’t know how to handle it.”

Lav looked up at him, wearing her confusion plainly on her face. “But didn’t you love Lily?” She didn’t understand how he could say he never felt this way when he had mentioned loving her before.

“That was different.” He admitted softly. “You drive me fucking crazy, you know that? I can’t ever stop thinking about you. When I was with Lily, I still thought about fucking other girls. I cared about her and I loved her as a friend, I guess but. The thought to cheat doesn’t even cross my mind with you. I get so freaked out by the way I feel around you that I just fuck it up. Because that’s what I do, Shanna, I fuck everything up. Just look at what I did to Lily.”      

Lavender clung to him, afraid that if she loosened her grip then he’d fall apart right before her eyes. It wasn’t fair that he always had to pick up her pieces when he had his own issues to take care of. Maybe that was one of the points Lily was trying to make during that first week. Lav had never really given him a chance to be vulnerable and at the moment she hated herself for that.

“It’s okay,” She muttered to him. He wouldn’t look directly at her, choosing to stare off at a wall instead. When he didn’t respond or move, she reached up and put a hand on his cheek to force him to look at her. “I mean it, Pea. It’s okay to not understand what you’re feeling. It’s new to me too. I don’t think I’ve ever cared so much about someone before. Not like this.”  

His eyes bore into hers for a tense moment as they stared in silence once again. He dared to lean down and press his lips against hers, which Lavender took in eagerly. She opened her mouth slightly, tongue prodding at his lips in desperation.

Sweet Pea opened his mouth for her, his own tongue reaching out to greet her. They collided, rolling and wrestling. Lav couldn’t help but let out a needy whine as she pressed herself flush against him, wanting more each second that passed.

He backed her up against the nearby wall, hoisting her upwards by grabbing the backs of her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist, securing herself against him as they continued their bruising kiss. His hands that were perched on her hips, pushed up her thin tank top. Their lips finally broke apart as he pulled it over her head.

Her bra was quickly discarded next as he wasted no time at all. They had both been wanting this for far too long now and it was all too easy to get caught up in the moment. Daisy wasn’t around,and if Lily dared to come by then Sweet Pea was going to give her a solid piece of his mind.

Sweet Pea was groping both her breasts, making her keen against the wall. His thumbs ran over her nipples, hardening them. Lav grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him in for yet another deep kiss, needing something to occupy her mouth to keep her from becoming a moaning broken record.

Lavender pushed off his leather jacket and he happily aided her in shedding it. She enthusiastically unbuttoned his flannel, making quick work of it. Why did he have to wear so many fucking layers?

Finally once his flannel was off, he tore off his undershirt. With his bare chest exposed, Lavender ran her fingernails across his pectorals. The pads of her fingers brushing past his nipples and down his semi-toned stomach. She rolled her hips against him, eager and wanting. He simply wasn’t moving fast enough for her.

Sweet Pea seemed to be ignoring her pleas for more as he continued to manipulate her nipples slowly as they kissed. Lav simply huffed, pulling her mouth away from him so he could see her pout.

“Can’t you let me enjoy getting you off first?” He asked in a threatening tone. “Or do you want my dick that badly?”

Lavender groaned, “You are the worst, stop teasing me!”

“No.” He responded, attacking her neck with his mouth as his hands jerked her skirt upwards so that it was bunched at her waist. His thick fingers caressed her clit through her cotton underwear, making her let out another needy whine.

He pinched the swelling bundle of nerves, earning himself another whimper from her mouth. Sweet Pea pulled away from the wall, causing her to grab onto his shoulders as he carried her into her bedroom.

“You’re not going to fuck me against the wall?” She asked playfully as he rubbed circles around her clit. Her words devolved into a moan towards the end.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You little slut.” He hissed back. While other people absolutely could not call her that word, Sweet Pea definitely could. It was her own way of reclaiming it by telling him to use it. It sent a passionate thrill down her spine.

He dropped her onto the bed, causing her to yelp in surprise. She looked up at him, doe-eyed as he unbuckled his belt and ripped it free from his pants. In one swoop he grabbed both of her wrists, wrapping the leather around them before tying it to the headboard. Lavender was staring at him curiously, wondering where this had come from. He had never restrained her like this before, not that she minded. If she didn’t like it then she’d let him know, though he usually had a way of telling when something made her uncomfortable even more she verbalized it.

When she gave no outward sign of discomfort, he continued by ridding her of the rest of her clothing so that she was totally naked on the bed. He settled between her legs, kissing down her chest as she inhaled sharply with anticipation.

She had noticed that he only went down on her when he felt the occasion was particularly special. If it was a regular quickie then he usually didn’t bother. The action caused a warm feeling to wrap around her as she tried to squirm away from his fanning breath.

Sweet Pea shot her a look telling her to be still as he tightened his grip around her thighs. He attacked her clit with a series of licks and suckling kisses, a finger probing at the entrance to her core. Lav jerked in his grip, whimpering and whining for more as he was doing nothing but tease her with his mouth.

He latched on firmly, sucking hard as he swirled his tongue around her in a quick rhythm that had her quaking in his grip. Two fingers plunged into her wet pussy, curling inside of her before easing out. She couldn’t stop the mewls from coming out or the quiet begs for more. He worked her over, pumping his two digits at an incredibly fast pace as he continued to service her with his tongue. In minutes Lav was pushed over the edge, crying out for him as she pulled at her restraints.

Sweet Pea pulled away from her, pressing the two fingers that had been inside of her into her mouth for her to clean them off. She sucked on them, hollowing out her cheeks as she stared into his dark eyes. Once he was satisfied with her work, he pulled them out and wiped the excess saliva onto the bed sheets.

“Have I ever told you how great your pussy tastes?” He asked in a husky tone as he readied himself between her thighs. Lav shifted her hips to give him more room, spreading her legs as far as she could to get him ample space. There was a raging blush across her cheeks as she shook her head no.

Sweet Pea smirked, tip pressing into her folds but not quite entering her. “You look so pretty with your legs spread out like that, dripping for my cock.” She swallowed thickly, while enjoying the dirty talk she was unable to respond to it. It was still a new thing for her to hear as her other partners had never done it before. Being young and not nearly as experienced did have its downsides. Although if he were honest with her, he loved how flustered it made her.

“Do you want me to fuck you, princess?” He asked, still teasing her with his closeness. She moved her hips, trying to get him to enter her, however he simply pulled back a fraction just to spite her. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.” He growled.

Lavender whined at him pathetically, “Fuck me, Pea, please!” Her face grew a darker shade of red. Sweet Pea merely smirked as he slowly pushed into her, biting back a moan at how tight and slick she was.

She seemed to relax into the bed as he filled her, stretching her walls as he continued to plunge deeper inside of her. She let out a soft, breathy moan and her eyes slid shut so she could focus on the sole feeling of being completed by him.

He moved her legs so that they were flung over his shoulders haphazardly, leaning forward so that they were pressed into her chest. She pouted up at him, wanting him to move his hips to give her arousal some kind of relief. Sweet Pea was giving her a cocky look, knowing exactly what she wanted and purposefully not giving it to her.

“Pea,” She whimpered again, giving him the most desperate facial expression that she could muster. “Please? I love you-”

That seemed to be what he wanted to hear as he suddenly pulled his hips back and snapped them forward. He fell into a heavy rhythm, slamming against her as she moaned helplessly beneath him. Sweet Pea grunted as he bared his weight on his wrists, hands placed on either side of her shoulders.

He moved at a furious pace, pounding into her harder than he ever had before. Lavender couldn’t say anything coherently, simply falling apart as he reduced her into a shapeless mass of pleasure. She felt as if she was wound incredibly tight and he was yanking on the end of her string, daring her to unravel at any moment.

She let out a loud gasp as he adjusted the angle in which he drove into her, hitting deeper than before and making her toes curl with delight. Her stomach felt tense, clenching as she tried to keep herself from exploding too soon.

"Don't hold it back," he growled at her, knowing her body better than she did sometimes. "Come all over my dick, baby girl."

Lav cursed as he picked up speed again, throwing her mercilessly over the edge and into a sea of ecstasy.

Sweet Pea slacked his pace slightly, allowing his rhythm to become sloppy as he chased his own high. In minutes he was releasing inside of her, filling her to the brim with his load.

He gently lifted off of her, unfurling her legs so that she could lay normally. He crashed down beside her after undoing the belt that tied her wrists, pulling her into his chest as they both heaved for air. She nuzzled her nose against his sternum, inhaling the sensual mixture of sweat and sex as he rubbed her back soothingly.

“I love you too,” He mumbled back to her as he drifted into the twilight dimension of sleep.

There was a hard but tentative knock on the door to Sweet Pea’s trailer. Lily managed to gather herself up off the kitchen floor, having been crying there alone for the past ten minutes. Luckily Daisy had placated herself in the living room, playing with a few of the toys that Lavender had bought for her a few days prior.

Lily cleaned herself up the best she could in the time it took for her to open the door, finding the next in line for Serpent King standing there looking bashful. As if he knew something that he shouldn’t.

“Hey,” He said softly, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly, “can we talk?”

She bit into her lower lip hard to keep from crying again. She knew exactly what this was about and she really didn’t want to face up to it yet. Ever since she came back she found herself growing closer and closer to Jughead. Her heart seemed to thump loudly in her ears anytime they came into contact with one another. Even passing him in the hallway sometimes left her breathless. She absolutely hated this feeling, as she knew exactly what it meant. It had been similar to what she felt for Sweet Pea some time ago. Only this time it seemed so much worse, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just post pregnancy hormones raging.

Lily stepped to the side so he could walk in. He brushed past her, not meaning to touch her as he did so. Their arms touched for a split second, leaving a warm and tingling feeling in the joined flesh. Jughead quickly moved away, making a straight line to the couch in order to plop down on it as if he’d had a long and hard day.

He took his beanie off momentarily, running his fingers through his thick locks before roughly pulling it back over them. His hair resettled, framing his face perfectly. Lily gulped as she looked at him in an attempt to settle the uproar of nerves in the pit of her stomach.

She closed the door, locking it out of sheer habit and muscle memory before joining him. She chose to sit in the recliner adjacent to the couch, not wanting to risk visibly showing how much she needed the company right this very moment. Her teeth were clenched, hands balled up on her knees into tiny fists. She looked as if she may snap in two at any second.

“Are you dealing?” Jughead asked finally. The tension in the air seemed to throb painfully as Lily looked away from him and towards her little girl that was jangling  a ring of plastic keys. She really didn’t want to answer him, however she knew that she had no choice but to. She had been caught red handed by Sweet Pea and Lavender the night before. While Lavender had tried to save her, clearly her ex had no intention of just letting this slide. He could be such an insufferable asshole when he wanted to be.

“Yes.” Lily admitted to him, knowing that she’d be unable to lie even if she wanted to. Nausea swept over her and she felt like she may start to puke her feelings out at any moment. She fidgeted with the fraying edges of a hole in the knee of her beat up jeans, hoping the tiny thoughtless movements would keep her sane for just a minute longer.

Jughead let out a stressed sigh, “you know I have to tell my dad, right?” He asked and she nodded numbly. “He wants me to take over when I turn eighteen, says he’s too old to keep doing this shit. So he’s making me handle the younger Serpents for now to learn how to deal with issues like this.

He paused, wanting to ask her for her advice on the situation before realizing that it would be really dumb to do so. Lily was the one to show him around Southside High when he first got there. She taught him all the Serpent Laws and helped him through the trials. He’d be lost right now without her, and yet here he was having to find some kind of fitting punishment for her.

“Is it the money?” He asked quietly, not wanting to offend her. Babies were expensive, he knew that. Maybe he hadn’t been giving her enough jobs to work lately, and the thought of her struggling made him feel incredibly guilty. “Because I can get you more money, Lils-”

“No, Jug.” She replied in a voice that was equally as soft as his. “I’m not getting paid to do it, at least not cash.”

A perplexed look crossed his face, “then why?” He probed, needing to know why she was doing something so risky. If she were caught, then Daisy would likely be taken from her and no one in the gang wanted that.

Lily tensed even more so than she already was. “Please, Jug, just drop it.” She said, her tone becoming more urgent. “I really can’t tell you why. I’m not doing this by choice, alright? I can’t give you any details.”

His eyes darkened. “Is someone blackmailing you?” If someone was threatening to harm her in any way then he needed to know. Not only for her safety, but for Daisy and Sweet Pea’s as well. Although he would totally deny the sheer amount of worry of her being in any kind of danger gave him.

Her mouth turned into a desert. She wasn’t sure if blackmail was truly the right word for what was going on. It wasn’t that the person she was dealing for was threatening to release any information on her, no it wasn’t quite like that. They would just stop helping her with her father’s appeal to turn over the conviction that landed him in jail. She couldn’t afford a defense attorney on her own. The person footing the bill was the one making her do such a risky thing as sell drugs on Ghoulie territory.

All she could do was shake her head at him, “That’s not-” She started before halting. The less he knew the better, or perhaps the less of the truth he knew the better. “Yes, Jug. Someone is blackmailing me and I have to do this, please.” She begged, allowing her eyes to go wide and desperate. “Please, I have to.”

“Law says I have to take your jacket, Lils...I can’t do that.” He admitted to her, unable to tear his blues away from her watery greens. “Do you know who is doing it? Or are they staying anonymous somehow?”

Did she lie again? Could she lie again? Would she just be digging herself into a deeper hole that may just collapse upon her one day and become her grave? “Jughead, I really can’t discuss this with you. Just know that it is not my choice but I have to do this. If I don’t then...then my dad may never get out.” The last part came out in a broken whisper as she choked back a cry for help.

Jughead’s gaze softened, hating seeing her so upset and wanting nothing more than to comfort her. However, he still had a job to do regardless of his feelings. “So they’re helping you get him out? I can help somehow, I’ll find a way, I promise I-”

“Jughead,” She said, shaking her head at him and letting out a small, tired laugh. “You don’t have the resources that this person does. They have money for a good lawyer, the Serpents don’t have that. If you have to take my jacket, then…” She hesitated, not liking what she was about to say, “then do it. My father never wanted this life for me anyway.”

The absolute last thing Jughead wanted to do on this Earth was to take her second skin from her. The thought alone seemed blasphemous. “If I do that, then you won’t be able to make money for Daisy. For now, we’ll keep this on the down low. The longer it takes for my dad to know, the longer I can stall. I don’t want to take away your livelihood, especially when you’re being forced into breaking the code.”

Lily heaved a heavy sigh, “When FP finds out, he’s going to murder you.”

A smile broke across his sullen face, “then who’d take over? Sweet Pea? Can you imagine?”

They both devolved into laughter, the air around them lightening. After a few moments, they stopped and fell into silence once more. At least this time it was less intense. “Promise me something, Lily.” Jughead said finally after he noticed her shoulders drop.

She looked up at him, eyes connecting once more. “What is it?” She asked, wondering what else he could possibly need from her. The seriousness on his face was causing her anxiety to ramp up again, the dial turning up all the way to eleven.

“If you’re ever in any danger, you’ll come to me and tell me?” He said gently, not wanting to further unnerve her. “I will do whatever in my power to help you. I won’t let anything happen to you. So please, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is or where I’m at, just tell me if you need my help. I’ll come running. Can you promise me that?”

A half dozen stray tears suddenly fell from her eyes, unable to hold them back at the sweet sentiment of him wanting to protect her. Even if it was just because he was her leader, even if it was just because they were such good friends, even if the reason wasn’t because he was infatuated with her as she so damn wished he was.

She wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands, smearing the clear liquid across her soft skin. “I promise, Jug.” She mumbled, seemingly in pieces but somehow held together at the same time. “I promise.”

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[sincerelymarinette]

A Recorded Life (45/50) - Miraculous Ladybug

Words: 1429 Chapter Summary: Well, what's the next step to take? The heroes talk it over and get a nice surprise that could help them more than they think. Author's Note: IT'S OFFICIAL: A Recorded Life will be over at chapter 50. I can't believe I've been writing this story for over a year, and I love it dearly. I have a few ideas for a mini-sequel (literally only like 5 parts) if people are interested, but we'll talk about that in the final chapter! Also, it feels a little rushed at the end of this chapter so I apologize in advance but I can't wait to get to the juicy stuff in the next five chapters.

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Next Steps

---

The team of heroes had a lot going on, to say the least. Master Fu had a lot of insight on everything he had seen from Gabriel's stash, but it was only marginally helpful. Granted, it was more than they had before.

"There was some stuff, but not as much as we expected. There were a few untranslated books that the guardian is working on translating and a few ancient pieces that belonged to old heroes," Marinette explained. "Well, and the peacock miraculous. It was severely broken, and wearing it could be dangerous, but the guardian is working on fixing her so she can be usable again.

The team listened intently, hoping for something that would give them a hint as to where Gabriel and Nathalie were hiding out, but alas, there was nothing.

Adrien cleared his throat to talk. Out of everyone, this was the hardest on Adrien, but he was pushing through. "I still think there's stuff in his lair. For some reason, I wasn't able to get in last time. But there are more options than one on how to get in there," He pointed to his ring.

The group was silent once again, not sure where to go from here. This time, it was Nino who broke the silence. "So, what does the peacock miraculous do?" Nino asked, hopeful that it could be helpful in their hands, and not Hawkmoth's.

"Well, you know how the moth can transform humans? Originally, it's meant to be used for good, obviously, but the peacock can do that to objects," Marinette explained.

"Well, it sure is a good thing you guys got ahold of it," Chloé commented. "Who knows what they would have done with that," She sighed.

Alya perked up to switch topics. "Do we have any idea how Hawkmoth found out about Nino and me?" She asked.

Adrien and Marinette looked at each other to try to figure out the answer. Truthfully, they didn't know, but it made sense that he knew. "I think it was kind of obvious. Who else would Marinette trust enough to join our team after out identities got revealed to the whole world?" Adrien reasoned. "It had to be someone close to us, and your descriptions just kind of matched, I guess," He said.

Nino and Alya both shrugged, accepting the explanation. "So, what's our next move?" Nino asked.

"Adrien and I talked a little bit about that with the guardian. First and foremost, we have to figure out where Gabriel and Nathalie are hiding out, and what they really want with our Miraculous," Marinette said. "We have to do everything we can to stay away from them, if he takes them and makes a wish, something awful could happen," She continued. "But I have no clue where to start. There's nothing left at the mansion that gives us any clues, and without Adrien being able to get into the lair, I'm not sure where to even begin," She sighed at the end, feeling helpless.

"I'll go back to the mansion. I have to," Adrien deadpanned.

Marinette shook her head quickly. "No, you can't. We already risked it going back there once, but I'm afraid if we go back there again, Hawkmoth will know. You know your father, he has eyes and ears everywhere, he would know that we didn't get everything and he would have the advantage over us," She told him. Adrien agreed with a shrug, not wanting to argue about it. He knew he had to get back in there and get into the lair, but they didn't need to talk about it right now.

"So, we just wait around to find a hint, then?" Chloé asked.

"Sounds like it," Alya interjected.

It was almost like Hawkmoth knew they were all together. It was almost like he knew exactly what they were talking about. Three days of silence, and at this perfect coincidence of time, there was a crash outside.

Alya's phone started to blare with an update from the news, showing exclusive footage of an Akuma only a few blocks away. The whole team stood up and called for their kwamis, all transforming together. If it were under different circumstances, that would have been an impressive sight to see.

They all rushed out of Marinette's trap door to her balcony as Alya called out where the Akuma was and what they needed to expect. "It's a Ladybug fangirl. She's mad about something someone said about you!" Rena Rogue called out, still watching her phone and jumping across multiple roofs with her team.

"Well, at least he knows this one will hurt," Ladybug sighed. Once they found the Akuma, everyone stopped to hear what she was saying. She had on an identical outfit to Ladybug's, and her brown hair was in ponytails. It was pretty close to when Chloé was akumatized to be like Ladybug, but much scarier, because she was a heck of a lot sweeter than Chloé.

"Ohmigosh!" The Ladybug look-alike squealed, and used her yo-yo to get up to the roof with the heroes on it. "Are you actually Ladybug? Who am I kidding, of course, you are, look at you! I'm so glad to finally meet you. We are going to be best friends forever!" She said, her voice getting much deeper and more serious at the end of the sentence.

Ladybug calmly laughed. "Oh, you're too sweet. What's your name?" Ladybug asked.

"Laylabug! We're going to be best friends, and no one will stop me. Not even your team," She said and grabbed Ladybug's hand, holding it so tight Ladybug thought it was going to bruise.

"Of course, we can be friends," Ladybug said. "But do you think you can let go of my hand? It hurts a bit, and friends wouldn't do that to each other, right?"

Laylabug contemplated it, but stopped when the purple mask showed up in front of her face, Hawkmoth communicating with her and trying to convince her of his ways. "Oh, I get it!" Laylabug said. "You're just worried that your friends will miss you and be lonely. Don't worry! Hawkmoth has best friends for them too!"

Right as she said that, four more teens appeared on the roof, looking like the heroes look-alikes. They all reached to grab their hands, and while Queen Bee and Carapace got grabbed, Chat Noir and Rena Rouge were able to dodge and hide away from their new friends.

This only made the look-alikes angry. As Ladybug, Queen Bee, and Carapaece's hands were held tightly; the look-alikes used their equipment to take the three heroes away from there. They were strong, and they were serious about never letting them go.

Rena Rogue and Chat Noir had to come up with their own plan to get their friends back, which meant luring them out. It was a good thing Rena Rouge was able to get away, because she's got the easiest power to lure villains out.

After talking it over with Chat Noir, Rena Rouge used her mirage power to make it look like she and Chat Noir were going after the look-alikes and the rest of their team. Since the look-alikes were just teens, it was easy to trick them, but there was a total of five that needed to be taken down.

When the look-alikes were distracted, the real Rena Rogue and Chat Noir snuck up from behind and easily kick their legs out from under them, taking all of the look-alikes (and their friends) to the ground. Again, since they were only teenagers, it was a lot easier than it would have been if it were adults. Hawkmoth did not think this one through.

With the look-alikes on the ground, they weren't focused on keeping ahold of Ladybug, Queen Bee, and Carapace. Carapace used his shield to keep the look-alikes trapped, and Ladybug called for her lucky charm and received a mirror. By making them look at themselves, and how silly they looked, they got even angrier.

"Hawkmoth!" Laylabug screamed, making the purple mask show up in front of her face again. "You promised me that Ladybug would be my best friend forever! I will come to that home you're staying in and take you down myself for lying! I know where you are!" She screamed.

Before she could say anymore, Laylabug was turned back into a normal girl, and Ladybug used her Miraculous Ladybug to clean up the rest of the kids.

Hopefully, someone got this whole battle on video, because there's a lot that could be helpful here.

@lady-of-the-roses-and-lilies @bookishserendipity03 @avatheexceed @gkz10 @coccinellegirl @kat-thatoneweirdo @strawberryblondish @snow-swordswoman @lilgaga98 @evufries  @toodaloo-kangaroo

[elyvorg]

Misc. Luigi rambles (1 of ?): mostly LM1 edition

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a great game that I thoroughly enjoyed, in large part thanks to the character animation on Luigi doing a fantastic job of getting across how scared he is all the time. That’s the main draw of a Luigi’s Mansion game, after all, right? (…No? Just me? I hope it’s not just me.)

Playing the game rekindled some of my Luigi Feelings from back in 2013, to the point that I decided to get some of those thoughts down in words now that I have a tumblr that exists for rambles like this. Said thoughts are actually mostly about Luigi’s Mansion 1 and are things I kept thinking about while eagerly waiting for the second game to come out. There’s also just some overthinking of Mario canon in general.

The deep backstory

So Mario is your typical perfect invincible hero who’s always eager for adventure and knows he can save the day, while Luigi is easily scared and lacks confidence and is rather emotionally dependent on Mario. They’re twins, but Mario is emphatically the “big brother” and Luigi the “little brother”, despite the fact that Luigi is physically taller, and also that he’s physically stronger than Mario in a lot of regards. He can jump higher, to name one example, and yet Mario’s always the one who’s famed for his jumping, as seen in the kinds of games where characters talk about this sort of thing, with nobody ever mentioning that actually Luigi’s an even better jumper than Mario, not even Luigi himself if he’s there.

This general gist of the bros’ contrasting personalities in spite of their relative physical ability actually happens to be perfectly set up by their backstory in Yoshi’s Island. In that game, they’re newborn babies (or as “newborn” as you can get when it happens via stork), but they’re evidently already self-aware to some degree based on the stuff Baby Mario is capable of, which I guess is just how babies work in this universe. And the game features Baby Mario going on an epic adventure with Yoshis to rescue his brother, while Baby Luigi is kidnapped and helpless to save himself, yet apparently has some kind of twin telepathy that lets him know his brother is coming to save him. So it’s only natural that Mario then grows up to be the heroic adventurous brother and Luigi the scared dependent brother, regardless of which of them is physically more capable. It makes an amazing amount of coherent character-writing sense as a backstory considering that this is, you know, Mario games.

(Plus, there’s also a Yoshi’s Island sequel on the DS, which, as far as I’m aware, features other babies the Yoshis can carry along with Baby Mario such as Baby Peach and Baby Wario… but Baby Luigi is still the damsel in distress who needs saving. It’s like the developers of that game knew they needed to keep Baby Luigi kidnapped and helpless because if he’d also got to have adventures with Yoshis as a baby then he would have gained confidence in himself after all, and clearly they couldn’t risk compromising the entire Mario canon like that.)

As far as I know, Luigi having an irrational fear of ghosts in particular doesn’t seem to be set up anywhere, alas. That’s probably just down to what I’ve noticed seems to be something of a Japanese writing trope to just give a character a deathly fear of ghosts, even though it usually doesn’t make any rational kind of sense to be so afraid of ghosts in particular (nor in Luigi’s case when there’s plenty of other types of dangerous beings in his world), simply as a shorthand to show that they’re a wuss. Which generally tends in the more complex cases to be rather disappointing lazy writing, but I don’t mind in this case because, A, it’s the Mario canon, it was never going to be that thought-out, and B, it means we get to have the Luigi’s Mansion games in which Luigi is constantly terrified throughout, and that’s obviously a good thing.

Humming

My favourite thing about the first Luigi’s Mansion game, something that it has going for it over the others even though the later two games are far better both in terms of gameplay and character animation on Luigi, is Luigi’s humming. Whenever Luigi is in a dark room that might have ghosts in and is not actively using his vacuum, he is constantly humming the same tune over and over. The best part of this is the three different humming tracks that the game uses depending on Luigi’s health, which get increasingly more desperate and terrified-sounding the more hurt he is. (Turns out Charles Martinet isn’t just here to do goofy Italian voices – he’s actually a really fantastic voice actor.) The lower-health ones especially really give the sense that Luigi isn’t humming this tune just because he feels like it, but rather because he’s desperately trying to keep himself going despite every instinct telling him to run away and never come here again. He does not stop humming, even though at lowest health he sounds so exhausted that he can barely manage to hum at all – yet he Just. Keeps. Forcing himself to hum that next note anyway no matter how brokenly off-key it is. It’s like he’s clinging to that as something to focus on and distract himself with, because without it he knows he’ll just fall apart. And he cannot afford to fall apart no matter what, not when he’s the only one who can save his big bro.

I say this is the one thing in the first game I like more than the second or third, but I’m not complaining that the second or third games don’t have this, because that kind of desperate constant survival-mantra humming wouldn’t make narrative sense in them. (Luigi does sometimes nervously hum the BGM in LM2, but only occasionally and only for short bursts, without different versions of it for different levels of health, so it doesn’t have nearly the same effect.) See, in the second and third games, Luigi’s done this before. He’s still scared, but beneath that, he knows that he’s capable of doing it again. As such, he doesn’t need such a desperate coping mechanism to keep himself going out of a fear that without it he’ll never make it to the end.

The tune that Luigi hums throughout the game is what I consider to simply be the Mansion’s theme (though I don’t know whether it’s officially called that or not). The mansion theme happens to be quite similar to E. Gadd’s theme, sharing a decent chunk of melody with it, to the point that I’ve seen multiple people not even realise they’re two different pieces and mistake one for the other. My headcanon for the similarity is this: E. Gadd’s theme was playing in-universe in some form the first time Luigi talked to him in his lab, to the point that it was stuck in Luigi’s head when he went back into the mansion. (This is very plausible, because E. Gadd’s theme explicitly does exist in-universe in the form of the GameBoy Horror ringtone.) So Luigi started humming it to himself to try and take his mind off his fear… except he only remembered some of how it went and filled in the blanks with his imagination. And because he was so scared, his imagination made the bits he filled in sound a lot more ominous and creepy in tone than the original tune was. If you listen to the differences between E. Gadd’s theme and the mansion theme, the parts which are unique to the mansion theme are the creepiest-sounding parts of the tune. In fact, as Luigi hums the mansion theme with the game’s instrumental backing, the only parts of the melody that the BGM actually plays are the parts that are unique to the mansion theme.

(You can also hear the ghosts faintly cackling along with the entire mansion theme in some places, but we can imagine that they started doing that after Luigi had created the rest of the melody and been humming it for a while, to try and unnerve him even more and make the humming less comforting for him.)

“M-M-Marioooo?”

Another fun thing which has increasingly desperate and terrified voice clips depending on Luigi’s health is him calling out Mario’s name. But something notable about this is that, even after the cutscene in which Luigi sees where Mario’s being held captive, the button which makes him call Mario’s name… still makes him call Mario’s name, even though Luigi now knows exactly where Mario is and that he won’t be getting a response.

Which, sure, is probably just because the game developers couldn’t be bothered to program it to change halfway through the game, but shush, it can make sense in-story too if you think about it. For the first half, Luigi was calling out for Mario because all he knew was that Mario was somewhere in the mansion, so there was always a chance he’d get a response. It was always possible that Mario could be just behind that next door, and then Luigi’d just have to do one more room before it’s over and they can leave and he’ll never have to go near another ghost again. But after having seen where Mario really is – held captive in some fancy underground altar room guarded by King Boo – Luigi would be getting the sinking realisation that he’s probably going to have to go through every other room in the mansion before he can get in there, isn’t he. Him continuing to call Mario’s name anyway after that point isn’t because he has the memory of a goldfish, but because he’s trying to trick himself back into the mindset he was in before he learned where Mario is, when his task didn’t seem quite as incredibly daunting because there was always the chance Mario was just behind the next door. He just has to do one more room, and then Mario’ll be there, right? Just one more room. Just one more note of the tune. Don’t think about the big picture and how impossibly terrifying it seems. Just keep going, one step at a time, no matter what. Luigi’s implicit coping mechanisms during this whole ordeal are delightful.

“What’s the holdup?”

Speaking of the point at which Luigi sees Mario through the bottom of the well, while you’re in the back garden where that well is, you can sometimes faintly hear Mario’s voice echoing out of the well, saying, “Hey, Luigi! What’s the holdup?”. Which seems on the surface like an absolute dick move, berating him for taking so long like the reason why isn’t obvious, making light of the struggle Luigi would be having here. But I refuse to believe that Mario would ever be a dick to his brother, especially not at a time like this where Luigi is his only hope of rescue and Mario has to know that his little bro’s got to be terrified and yet doing his best anyway.

It’s possible, especially at this point in the totally-strictly-defined Mario timeline in which he hasn’t really had any starring roles of his own yet, that Luigi has something of a complex about this kind of thing: always being considered the forgettable one of the pair, the backup option who’s really just dragging his superstar brother down. This is not, mind you, in a sense that makes Luigi resentful of his big bro for hogging the spotlight – Luigi is too pure and idolises Mario too much to ever feel that way, even deep down, and if anyone thinks otherwise they need to go and see the Dream’s Deep section of Mario and Luigi Dream Team. But perhaps Luigi gets kind of tired of people acting like he’s basically useless just because he’s not quite as super-amazing as his big bro definitely is.

So maybe hearing Mario apparently having that same opinion sparks the same feeling in Luigi that he always feels when he overhears those sorts of comments about himself, one of anger and indignation, that no, he’s more capable than that, he’ll show them. Why is Mario of all people saying this to him, now of all times? He’s doing his best, and he’s only taking so long because this is really hard! Holdup? What holdup? He’ll get through this, just you watch! …Which would be a mindset that might manage to distract Luigi from his fear, at least a little bit, and motivate him with something other than the terror of losing Mario if he fails.

One possibility for why Mario said this, then, is that he knows Luigi well enough to know that he’d have this reaction, and he said this with the deliberate intent of giving Luigi something to push him forward and take his mind off his fear.

…That was my headcanon about this line for the longest time, since sometime before 2013, even, and so I’m mentioning it here for posterity. But it only just now occurred to me that actually there’s a much simpler explanation. “What’s the holdup?” doesn’t actually have to be meant in a derogatory way; it could also just be meant as straightforward encouragement.

Getting to see a little of Mario’s behaviour towards Luigi in situations like these at the end of Luigi’s Mansion 3 made me realise that Mario’s just kind of like this in general. His way of helping Luigi through his fears isn’t to acknowledge the fear and reassure him, but to just jump on ahead while calling for Luigi to follow him, leading by example to inspire Luigi to try and be like him and keep pushing forward despite his fear. Mario acts like there’s nothing to be afraid of in the hope that it’ll help Luigi realise that there really is nothing to be afraid of, because they’re both superstar heroes who can save the day. After all, Mario has to know that Luigi’s really even stronger and more capable than him, and the only thing holding him back is his fear.

“What’s the holdup?” is the same kind of principle, even though Mario’s not able to lead by example in that situation. He’s making light of Luigi’s struggles only in the sense that he’s trying to help Luigi see as well that they’re not as big as he thinks they are. “What’s the holdup? There’s no need to be afraid, ‘cause you got-a this, bro! I believe in-a you!”

Anyway Mario and Luigi are adorable brothers and Luigi is the bravest of heroes.

[grim-on-the-darkside]

“According to Lucas' son Jett, he spent about a year before the Lucasfilm sale developing a sequel trilogy, which would have continued the saga.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnr18AUym-o

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George Lucas’ Episode VII - https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba

George Lucas' Ideas for His Own Star Wars Sequel Trilogy - https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas-ideas-for-his-own-star-wars-sequel-trilogy-1826798496

STAR WARS: The Original Plans for the Sequel Trilogy - YouTube -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dM9qFe4p0

https://ibb.co/jvph85c

"In late August 2012 Star Wars fans from all around the world gathered in Orlando, Florida for the sixth official Star Wars convention, Celebration VI. The lineup was strong despite the live action movies, always the brightest and biggest stars in the franchise’s galaxy, coming to an end seven years earlier. Though he was not scheduled to attend, series creator George Lucas was there. Publicly, he was just there to make a surprise appearance during the panel for the animated The Clone Wars TV show. But privately he was there to talk to original trilogy stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. They were brought to a conference room away from the convention floor where George broke the news: he was working a new Star Wars trilogy and wanted them to reprise their iconic roles."

[Disney didn't buy Lucasfilm/Star Wars until October 30th of 2012. This meeting occurred months before the sale, and at that point, the sale couldn't be assured.]

[Now there is some speculation as to why Lucas made the treatments of his ideas for his Sequel trilogy if he was considering selling, but it should be noted that Jett Lucas, George Lucas's son has stated that his Father [George] had been working on his Sequel trilogy for an entire year before this.]

When George decided to make a new trilogy, he moved quickly. He reached out to old friend and all-star film producer Kathleen Kennedy sometime in the first half of 2012, hoping to bring her on as co-chair of Lucasfilm.The two then approached screenwriter Michael Arndt about writing the entire trilogy around May.

This means this was already being talked about and definitive actions taken for the creation of his Sequel trilogy in the first months of 2012, which could have been almost 10 full months before Disney bought Lucasfilm in October of 2012.  

The design team, or “Visualists” as Rick Carter would call them, would meet with George Lucas on January 16th at Skywalker Ranch, where he would be shown art of Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Temple he had exiled himself to, and the training of Kira. This appears to be his last involvement with the film.

Phil Szostak, author of The Art of The Force Awakens and The Art of The Last Jedi, revealed that the Luke Skywalker seen in The Last Jedi had his genesis in ideas from late 2012.

"So, the late-2012 idea of a Luke Skywalker haunted by the betrayal of one of his students, in self-imposed exile & spiritually in “a dark place”, not only precedes Rian Johnson’s involvement in Star Wars but J.J. Abrams’, as well."

And in 2016, Pablo Hidalgo confirmed that Thea (Kira), Skyler, Darth Talon, and the planet of Felucia were in George’s plans.

[Darth Talon was the only thing from the Expanded Universe in Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy.]

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"Fast forward to 2012, when we hear George is looking to make SW movies again, I though I thought 'I wonder what next Mon Calamari's gonna be. And it turns out, the Mon Calamari this time was huge swaths of the EU. There was no Jacen, no Jaina. No new Jedi Order. Chewie lived. Not surprising, but there it was." Pablo Hidalgo ~ 2016               

https://ibb.co/nmjWcBM

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"My question is, what did George's treatments for 7 look like? I would love to see if they fit the EU."

Answer [Pablo Hidalgo]- "They did not. For instance, there was no Jaina, Jacen, or Anakin."  ~ 2017                                                                       

https://ibb.co/N7HKCsF

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"Question from Today, but I thought this was pretty well known. George Lucas never considered Jacen, Jaina, or Mara Jade as part of his universe."

~ Pablo Hidalgo May 2016

https://ibb.co/VDX2qvY

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Question - 'So, if the 3rd season of Rebels was discussed in autumn of '14 [2014], how long was the reboot planned?

Pablo Hidalgo [Lucasfilm Story Group] - "Since at least the summer of 2012."

[Lucas still owned Star Wars than.]

https://ibb.co/1qTnLjS [direct tweet] https://ibb.co/C5rRTFc - [Discussion tweet is used in]

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“According to Mark Hamill, George’s overall plan for the sequel trilogy had Luke training his sister Leia in Episode IX before dying at the end of the film, though it’s unclear if Mark was referring to Lucas’ plans at the time of the sale to Disney or if this was from the numerous ideas he’d shared with the actor in the 80s.”

[It was a bit of both. Mark Hamill had always wanted [If Lucas made a Sequel Trilogy] - To have Leia learning the Force, it is even speculated that Mark Hamill wanted Luke to die a heroic death towards the end of the ST having trained Leia and have her be the one who restores the Jedi Order.

“No, there is another.” - Yoda, Empire Strikes Back

That is what happens in Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy. Disney didn’t use George Lucas’ storyline, but they did use certain plot points from it. Context matters of course. The following is a list of things that Lucas had created in his Sequel Trilogy that Disney pilfered from Lucas’s Story Treatments.

Please note while core points are confirm-able, some speculation of extrapolation  from various sources is included. I tend to think it’s fairly reliable, but I cannot swear to every detail.

* There was only one Grandchild of Anikan Skywalker ever born. Ben Solo. He was a student at Luke’s Jedi Temple, he did turn to the Darkside and slay some or all of the other students and set fire to the Jedi Temple before fleeing.

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"The Son falling to the Darkside was always in the mix, the movies just ended up having it as an already established fact."

~ Pablo Hidalgo, The Tweets of San Francisco: A QM Production, 2018

https://ibb.co/9WXZZQQ

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' Question - "How many students were at Luke's' academy'? Was ot even an 'academy'? "We'd likely never use that term. That's very 'EU', not very George. It'd be a temple. As for numbers, can't say now." ~ Pablo Hidalgo 2016

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* Han and Leia had been separated for about 5 years, but they were drawing closer again.

* Ben Solo does kill Han Solo in Episode 8. We don’t know how. Lucas wrote this into the story line because he knew that Harrison Ford wanted that. He just asked him to wait til Episode 8 for it. Harrison Ford was fine with that.

* Chewbacca never had a moon fall on his head. He was very much alive.

* There was no New Jedi Order.

* Luke did go into something of a self-exile and he did live on an island, he was in a ‘bad place’ [Not Darkside] , he did think he failed and he was despondent and didn’t want to try and train New Jedi again. He was not ‘disillusioned’ about the Jedi. He didn’t actually want them to end. He just was afraid of creating more Vader’s and Ben Solos because he never felt confident because of his own limited training and failing. - He was not hiding persay, but he did want to be left alone more or less - We also don’t have time frames. We don’t know how long he was on the island. - Once again, different story lines in terms of context.

"But anyway Luke in exile predates TLJ by a long time and came from someone who can very happily and rightly supersede anyone's feedback :)" ~ Pablo Hidalgo https://ibb.co/sKZnWKk

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"Luke was training a new generation of Jedi, it all went wrong because of 1 boy, and he's the 'Jedi killer' - that's the source [the source being George Lucas sequel trilogy treatments he made in 2011 and ended up selling to Disney later]. ~ Pablo Hidalgo, 2016 https://ibb.co/JjYtGtf

* At a certain point Luke realizes there is something wrong with the Force.It feels ‘sick’. He knows something is very very wrong and that it would have dire consequences if it couldn’t be stopped. He spent a great amount of time communing with the Force, desperate to find the answer to what is ailing it before it is too late. Because the Force is getting worse and worse, Luke communing with it as much as he does effects him as well. [The Whills are feeding on the Force]. He knows it will probably end up killing him because he doesn’t care what happens to him just as long as he can find the answer and hopefully how the threat can be overcome.

* It is believed at a certain point in Episode 9 he does find the answer. He tells the gang what needs to be done because he was far too weak and was dying and nothing could stop it. He put on a brave face. Leia leads the group to the ‘final battle’. Luke dies while they’re gone. His communing with the Force saves the Galaxy from the Whills by finding the answer to how to stop them. A heroic death befitting of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. [we have no idea how these things play out, what needs to be done, etc.]

* Luke did train and young girl. Her name was Kira. She was from Jakku and a tinkerer. We don’t know much about her, only that her training was never completed and she wasn’t a “Mary Sue”. Luke actually trained her.

* Luke does train Leia to become a Jedi. She becomes a full Jedi Knight towards the end of Episode 9.

* There is a scene that does take place in the Ruins of the Second Death Star [which is underwater]  in Emperor Palpatines Old Throne Room. The Emperor is as dead as a door nail. The Redeemed Anakin Skywalkwer’s sacrifice was not in vain.

  Princess Leia, fully trained by The Last Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker, becomes The Last Jedi Knight in Episode 9. “The Other” - It than falls to Leia to restore the Jedi Order, which if the speculation is true, is what Mark Hamill wanted.

 What I wish is that [Disney] had been more accepting of [George Lucas]’guidance and advice. Because he had an outline for ‘7’, '8’ and '9’. And it is vastly different to what they have done.

— Mark Hamill, 2017

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Mark Hamill quotes about Lucas Sequel Trilogy -

"George had an overall arc – if he didn't have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the [sequel trilogy was] going – but this one's more like a relay race. You run and hand the torch off to the next guy, he picks it up and goes.

"I happen to know that George didn't kill Luke until the end of [Episode] 9, after he trained Leia. Which is another thread that was never played upon [in The Last Jedi]."

where Lucas would have taken the second set of prequels. Though Leia and Luke communicate telepathically, fans have never really seen her use the Force. Mark Hamill had this to say about Leia using the Force in George Lucas' original writings.

   "This is always something that interest me because we can communicate telepathically and I tell her in one of the movies, I guess the third one, you have that power too. So I always wondered, and I don't read the fan-fiction [The Expanded Universe] , why she wouldn't fully develop her Force sensibilities and I think that's something George Lucas addressed in his original outline for 7, 8, 9. I was talking to him last week, but they're not following George's ideas so we'll have to wait and see on that one. But it seems like a waste of an innate talent that she should utilize in some way."

https://movieweb.com/star-wars-leia-originally-used-force-george-lucas/

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"...Knowing that the film was made for a young audience, I was trying to say,in a simple way, that there is a God and that there is both a good side and a bad side. You have a choice between them, but the world works better if you're on the good side."

~ George Lucas

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“Friendships, honestly, trust, doing the right thing, living on the right side and avoiding the dark side,” Lucas said. “Those are the things it was meant to do.”

~ Lucas on Star Wars and what its about, 2017

https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/13/15288998/george-lucas-star-wars-celebration

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"The message of the Star Wars films is pretty classic. There’s good and evil and the hero’s journey, his quest."

~ George Lucas, May 2020

"Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it."

~ George Lucas

An interviewer said to Lucas after he said he would be too old to complete the third trilogy:

"Do you know how many fans would be willing to feed you Cream of Wheat and wheel you around in your chair if you did [intend to complete the third trilogy]?"

"Everybody said to drop the stuff about the midichlorians, it makes it too confusing. But it’s a metaphor for a symbiotic relationship that allows life to exist. Everybody said it was going to be a giant turkey: “This isn’t going to help LucasFilm at all.” I said, “This is about the movie and the company is just going to have to deal with whatever happens.” That’s one of the reasons why there was so much hype on the first prequel: Everybody was terrified."

~ George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2005

“The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote.”

~ Lucas on his sequel trilogy

"The Force has two sides - [Light and Dark]. It is not an inherently malevolent or a benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and Hope."

~ George Lucas

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